Research progress in retinal structural alterations in patients with mental disorders

Abstract

Mental disorders frequently co-occur with other physical illnesses, becoming one of the leading causes of disability worldwide. Early diagnosis and intervention are crucial for the effective management of these disorders. Currently, biomarker studies on mental disorders predominantly concentrate on genes, blood indicators, and imaging features of the brain. There is a growing interest in objective phenotypic markers as a research focus. It is established that the retina is part of the central nervous system (CNS), which extends from the mesencephalon and develops concurrently with the brain during the embryonic period. Given the overlapping pathophysiological mechanisms between neurodegenerative diseases and mental disorders, studying the structural and functional changes in the inner layers of the retina has emerged as a new direction in mental health research. The advent of optical coherence tomography (OCT) has enabled microscopic imaging of retinal structures. OCT is capable of objectively quantifying the retinal sub-layers and offers the advantages of being non-invasive, non-contact, and high-resolution. The use of OCT to explore structural changes in the retina among individuals with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression and other psychiatric disorders has been well documented; however, there is a paucity of reviews on this topic. This review summarizes current research on retinal structural alterations in patients with mental disorders, and the results demonstrate reduced thickness in certain sub-layers of the retina structure in patients with several mental disorders, which supports that the retina structure has the potential to be a biomarker for mental disorders and offers a novel avenue for research in the diagnosis and treatment.

Keywords

• optical coherence tomography (oct)
• mental disorder
• schizophrenia
• mood disorder
• retinal nerve fiber layer (rnfl)
• retina