Karmacharya Mrigendra Bir, Hada Binika, Park So Ra, Choi Byung Hyune
Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Inha University College of Medicine, Incheon, South Korea.
Department of Biomedical Sciences, Inha University College of Medicine, Incheon, South Korea.
Ultrasound Med Biol. 2018 Mar;44(3):647-656. doi: 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2017.12.004. Epub 2018 Jan 4.
Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a severe micro-vascular complication of diabetes. High glucose (HG)-evoked nitric oxide (NO) production mediated by increased oxidative stress is a key factor in DR pathogenesis. In this study, we examined whether low-intensity ultrasound (LIUS) stimulation can reduce HG-induced NO generation. We determined that LIUS stimulation decreased the HG-induced NO generation possibly via inhibition of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and subsequently diminished the associated pro-inflammatory pathway involving the induced expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase, cyclooxygenase-2 and vascular endothelial growth factor. In addition, we determined that LIUS stimulation reduced the quantity of NO produced by N-acetylcysteine, which was not mediated by ROS. These results indicate that LIUS can inhibit both ROS-dependent and -independent NO generation processes in ARPE-19 cells. We envision LIUS as a potential therapeutic alternative to treat DR. Further studies are required to understand the underlying mechanism of the LIUS-induced reduction of NO generation for DR therapy.
