Purpose: To understand the pathophysiogenesis of the proliferative retinopathies, with a simple and valuable tool, for pathophysiologic and therapeutic assays.
Methods: We prepared a 10 million platelet concentrate from the same donor in 30 microliters, directly injected into the right eye of 46 pigmented and 14 albino rabbits. Animals were sacrificed at days 7, 14, 21 and one month after injection. Before histopathological analysis, all animals were followed clinically to evaluate the vitreoretinal proliferation, scored according to a 6 grade classification.
Results: Vitreoretinal proliferation started at day 5 or 8 after injection and increased during the 3 following weeks. Eighty per cent of the eyes showed at the end of the first month a tractional retinal detachment. histopathology revealed intense cell migration and proliferation close to ciliary body appearing from the 7th day, then further increasing rapidly. Immunostaining showed cell infiltrates expressing vimentin and cytokeratin. Overexpression of vimentin was also found in ciliary and retinal epithelia, and in Müller cells.
Conclusion: This simple and valuable model can reproduce some characteristics of human vitreoretinal proliferations, such as the involvement of the ciliary body and the retinal pigment epithelium, inflammatory mechanisms occurring together with cell proliferation, and significant disturbances of cytoskeleton within deep ocular structures. Furthermore, this study is a first step on the way of antiproliferative assays, and for a better understanding of pathogenesis of intraocular proliferative disorders.