Objective To investingate the ultrastructural changes of retinal pigment epithelium(RPE) and its permeability in spontaneously hypertensive rats(SHR)and explore the relation between these changes and hypertensive retinopathy.MethodsThe ultrastructure of RPE cells in the SHR aged five,six,seven months wasobserved with transmission electronmicroscope and compared to its normotensive control strain(WKY) with the same age.Then,lanthanum tracer procedures were carried out to investigate pathological changes of the blood-retinal barrier.Results (1)In SHR the main pathological changes involved swelling of mitochondria,enlargement of endoplasmic reticula,decrease of RPE cell infolding,and sparseness of microvilli.These degenerations were more serious in older rats with higher blood pressure.(2)The breakdown of outer blood-retinal barrier with permeation of lanthanum tracers were evident in SHR aged six or seven month,however,in WKY and five-month SHR the traces were prevented from passing by tight junctions.ConclusionThe degeneration of RPE owing to ischemia and anoxia arises in early periosd of hypertensive retinopathy.The pathological changes of ultrastructure and permeability might interact with the damage of visual cells and play a main role in the hypertensive retinopathy.
Hypertensive retinopathy (HR) often coexist with carotid lesions in hypertensive patients. Carotid lesions are closely associated with cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, as well as end events, offering early important evidence to screening high risk patients. HR has significant value to predict target organ damage (TOD) of hypertension including carotid lesion. In addition, hypertensive retinopathy and carotid lesions-related ischemic ocular diseases will cause serious vision function damage. This article is going to summarize the value and correlation between hypertensive retinopathy and carotid lesions in terms of clinical manifestations, pathological physiological mechanism and target organ damage.