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Why Episodes of Low Blood Sugar Worsen Eye Disease in People With Diabetes - Neuroscience News
Jan 27, 2023 52 secs
Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine say they have linked such low blood sugar levels with a molecular pathway that is turned on in oxygen-starved cells in the eye.

The researchers found that low glucose levels in human and mouse retinal cells caused a cascade of molecular changes that can lead to blood vessel overgrowth.

This turned on the cellular machinery—including GLUT1—needed to improve their ability to utilize available glucose, preserving the limited oxygen available for energy production by retinal neurons.

This resulted in an increase in the production of proteins such as VEGF and ANGPTL4, which cause the growth of abnormal, leaky blood vessels—the key culprit of vision loss in people with diabetic eye disease.

The researchers plan to study whether low glucose levels in people with diabetes may impact similar molecular pathways in other organs, such as the kidney and brain.

In the presence of hypoxia, this physiologic response to low glucose resulted in a marked increase in the secretion of the HIF-dependent vasoactive mediators that promote diabetic retinopathy.

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