The Dry Form of Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD): The Current Concepts of Pathogenesis and Prospects for Treatment.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a disease that causes varying degrees of blindness, which afflicts millions of adults in their later years. Preliminary changes occur during normal aging, but in some individuals the pathology leads to the development of AMD. The pathology seems to be a mixture of biochemical, cellular, and molecular events. Lipofuscinogenesis and early drusen genesis are in the early stages of AMD and their inhibition or reversal would dramatically increase the quality of vision in elderly people. The disease is characterized by abnormal extracellular deposits, known as drusen, which accumulate along the basal surface of the retinal pigmented epithelium RPE. Widespread drusen deposition is associated with retinal pigmented epithelial cell dysfunction and degeneration of the photoreceptors. Recent studies have shown that drusen contain a variety of immunomodulatory molecules, suggesting that the process of drusen formation involves local inflammatory events, including activation of the complement cascade. Molecular pathways involved in the etiology of this disease and the potential prospects of its treatment will be presented on the basis of the results of the current studies.

Single nucleotide polymorphisms within functional regions of genes implicated in insulin action and association with the insulin resistant phenotype.

Type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance (IR) are characterized by severe anomalies in genes expression rate including genes involved in insulin signal transduction. Post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression is crucial for many physiological processes and is mediated mainly by untranslated region (UTR). Present study concentrated on the search for correlation between single nucleotides polymorphisms in UTRs of the INSR, PIK3R1, PTPN1, and SLC2A4 genes and IR. 130 unrelated diabetic patients and 98 healthy controls were analyzed in present study. Genotyping was performed by multiplex minisequencing preceded by multiplex PCR. Two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) showed significant differences in genotype frequencies between analyzed groups. Statistical significance was received for rs3745551 located in 3'-UTR of the INSR and rs3756668 located in 3'-UTR of the PIK3R1 gene with higher number of G/G genotype in insulin resistant subjects. Furthermore, patients carrying G/G genotype of those SNPs displayed higher BMI value, higher fasting glucose and insulin levels and were more insulin resistant assessed by HOMA-IR and QUICKI. Present study provides evidence for association between SNPs in UTRs of the INSR and PIK3R1 genes and insulin resistant phenotype.