Handelman G J, Snodderly D M, Krinsky N I, Russett M D, Adler A J
Eye Research Institute of Retina Foundation, Tufts University Health Sciences Campus, Boston, MA 02111.
Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 1991 Feb;32(2):257-67.
The amounts of zeaxanthin (Z) and lutein (L), the carotenoids constituting the primate macular pigment, were measured in the central retinas of monkeys (Saimiri sciureus and Macaca fascicularis). Two independent methods--reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and microdensitometry--were used for analysis of the same set of retinas. Most of the measurements were made on retinas that had been fixed by glutaraldehyde-paraformaldehyde perfusion of the animal. Control experiments showed that this fixation did not interfere with the quantitative extraction and analysis of the carotenoids. The amount of macular pigment calculated from microdensitometry of the foveal region was proportional to the amount of pigment assayed by HPLC of the same retinal area, demonstrating that either method can be used reliably to rank the carotenoid content of aldehyde-fixed foveas. The optical density of pigment in the axial direction through the retina was higher than would be predicted if the pigment were randomly oriented. This is consistent with the idea that the nonrandom orientation of the dichroic macular pigment molecules found in previous studies contributes to increased optical filtering of the retinal image. Comparisons of the amounts of Z and L between the left and right eyes of the same monkey, within 1 mm of the foveal center, always showed excellent agreement (averaging a 5% difference for Z and 11% difference for L), whereas differences among individual monkeys were very large (up to fourfold for Z). These results indicate that the uptake and assimilation of the macular carotenoids are biologically regulated by selective mechanisms in primate retinas.
在松鼠猴（Saimiri sciureus）和食蟹猴（Macaca fascicularis）的中央视网膜中，测量了构成灵长类黄斑色素的类胡萝卜素——玉米黄质（Z）和叶黄素（L）的含量。使用两种独立的方法——反相高效液相色谱法（HPLC）和显微密度测定法——对同一组视网膜进行分析。大多数测量是在通过戊二醛 - 多聚甲醛灌注动物固定的视网膜上进行的。对照实验表明，这种固定不会干扰类胡萝卜素的定量提取和分析。通过中央凹区域的显微密度测定法计算出的黄斑色素含量与同一视网膜区域通过HPLC测定的色素含量成正比，这表明两种方法都可以可靠地用于对醛固定的中央凹中的类胡萝卜素含量进行排序。穿过视网膜的轴向色素光密度高于如果色素随机取向时的预测值。这与先前研究中发现的二向色性黄斑色素分子的非随机取向有助于增加视网膜图像的光学滤过这一观点一致。在同一猴子的左右眼之间，在中央凹中心1毫米范围内的Z和L含量比较始终显示出极好的一致性（Z平均差异为5%，L平均差异为11%），而个体猴子之间的差异非常大（Z高达四倍）。这些结果表明，灵长类视网膜中的选择性机制对黄斑类胡萝卜素的摄取和同化进行生物学调节。
