Abstract
Purpose:
Recent retrospective clinical and animal studies suggest that cerebrospinal fluid pressure (CSFP) is important in glaucoma pathogenesis. Intraocular pressure (IOP) and CSFP are the driving components of translaminar pressure (TLP = IOP – CSFP), which acts across the lamina cribrosa (LC) thickness to create the translaminar pressure gradient (TLPG = TLP/LC thickness).
Methods:
We developed an implantable wireless telemetry system based on a small piezoelectric sensor with low temporal drift. IOP, measured in the anterior chamber, and intracranial pressure (ICP), measured in the brain parenchyma (as a surrogate for CSFP) were measured at 200 Hz in three male rhesus macaques (nonhuman primates, NHPs) on a 10% duty cycle (15 seconds of every 150-second period). Three-dimensional LC thickness was autosegmented as the mean thickness of the visible hyperreflective band in 48 radial spectral-domain optical coherence tomography b-scans centered on the optic nerve head.
Results:
Results indicated the rank order of IOP, ICP, TLP, and TLPG for waking, sleeping, and 24-hour periods averaged across all days. NHP 150110 had the highest IOP and ICP in all periods; however, it had the lowest TLPG in all periods due to its relatively thick LC. The other two NHPs showed similar shifts in the rank order of possible glaucoma risk factors.
Conclusions:
IOP is the only modifiable and readily measurable pressure-based risk factor for glaucoma. However, other potential risk factors such as ICP, TLP, and TLPG, as well as their rank-order patterns, differed compared to IOP across subjects, demonstrating that a comprehensive view of relevant risk factors is warranted.
Translational Relevance:
Future studies should consider including CSFP, TLP, and TLPG in addition to IOP as potential risk factors when assessing eye-specific glaucoma susceptibility.
One-way analyses of variance were used to determine if IOP, ICP, TLP, and TLPG were different across NHPs within each time period (wake, sleep, and 24-hour) and to determine the difference in LC thickness across NHPs. In order to test the reproducibility of quantifying LC thickness by autosegmentation, we assessed the intra- and intersubject variability of the LC thickness across imaging sessions (4 weeks apart). F-test significance was computed as the LC thickness variance between animals divided by the variance across imaging sessions (error term).
In this preliminary study, IOP and ICP data were collected in three male rhesus macaques on a 10% duty cycle, consisting of 200 measurements per second captured for 15 seconds of every 150-second period over a range of 69 to 281 days. TLPG measurements were calculated as (IOP – ICP)/LC thickness, defined as the overall mean thickness of the hyperreflective band within 48 radial SD-OCT image sets taken through the center of the ONH. Outcomes from the F-ratio analyses show that the hyperreflective band thickness in OCT was repeatable and therefore adequate for detecting the eye-specific variability in LC thickness. We have focused on eye-specific responses to IOP and TLP/TLPG that could contribute to glaucomatous pathophysiology. The purpose of this study was to assess the differences in IOP, TLP, and TLPG and their rank order among NHPs to demonstrate stratification of potential glaucoma risk factors. Results show that other potential risk factors such as ICP/CSFP, TLP, and TLPG, as well as their rank-order patterns, differ compared to IOP across subjects, demonstrating that a comprehensive view of relevant risk factors is warranted.
There is a strong and consistent diurnal cycle in ICP and TLP in NHPs, wherein TLP is much higher during waking hours in four NHPs,
45 and this pattern matches that reported for humans.
47 Importantly, the diurnal cycle of TLP is driven primarily by CSFP, not IOP, due to the large magnitude of diurnal CSFP changes, further indicating that CSFP plays an important role in ONH biomechanics and may contribute to glaucoma. As mentioned, TLPG takes laminar morphology into account and may be even more relevant to glaucoma than IOP, CSFP, or TLP. Morgan and colleagues
33,35 measured TLPG in dogs and found a strong correlation between the TLPG and TLP when the ICP was greater than 0 mm Hg. Hou and colleagues
48 also showed a positive correlation between ICP and retrolaminar tissue pressure above 3 mm Hg in dogs, although retrolaminar pressure was constant when ICP was less than 3 mm Hg. These studies showed that ICP and retrolaminar pressure are generally similar in dogs; therefore, it is reasonable to use ICP as a surrogate for CSFP when quantifying TLP in NHPs, as done in this study. We have recently shown that both ICP and TLP exhibit a large nychthemeral rhythm in spite of the fact that NHPs sleep sitting up, with TLP showing a 4.2-mm Hg (56%) mean increase during waking hours compared to sleeping hours.
45 A similar relative increase in ICP has been reported in humans when moving from the upright to supine position.
49 Unlike humans, NHPs sleep upright, so the large diurnal cycle in ICP and TLP was somewhat unexpected; the source of this nocturnal ICP increase is still being investigated in our laboratory.
The most striking finding in the current study is that the rank order of TLPG in these NHPs, which takes the laminar structure into account and may be even more relevant to glaucoma than IOP, CSFP, or TLP, is completely different from the order of these potential risk factors. Ample evidence suggests that higher IOP increases glaucoma risk. If one presumes that higher TLP and/or higher TLPG also increases glaucoma risk, then stratifying the three NHPs in this study by potential risk using a single variable is problematic, as shown in
Table 2. In fact, the NHP with the highest IOP is also the animal with the lowest TLPG, demonstrating that a more comprehensive view of the possible glaucoma risk factors is warranted. Further study of the contributions of IOP, TLP, and TLPG to glaucoma risk are needed.
The study is limited by the following considerations. First, the study was limited to a small sample size of three NHPs due to the preliminary nature of the investigation; hence, the reported results may not translate to the larger population of Rhesus macaques, although the results were significantly different among animals across time periods and thus we had adequate statistical power to detect effects. Future studies should be sure to include a larger sample size. Also, these results may not translate to the human population, although similar differences in LC thickness have been reported among patients,
50,51 so it is likely that similar variability in TLPG would be present across patients. Second, the repeatability of the number of scans was a closer confidence interval in the animals with more OCT sessions. The repeatability of the segmentation of the LC thickness measurements as the hyperreflective band has to be validated with a larger study and the use of histological measurements, as it is known that posterior identification of the LC using OCT is challenging.
IOP is the only modifiable and readily measurable pressure-based risk factor for glaucoma, but other potential risk factors such as ICP, TLP, and TLPG may differ compared to IOP across subjects, demonstrating that a comprehensive view of relevant risk factors is warranted. Future studies should consider including CSFP, TLP, and TLPG in addition to IOP as potential risk factors when assessing eye-specific glaucoma susceptibility.
The authors express their sincerest appreciation to Cheryl Killingsworth, DVM, PhD, Dipl ACVS, for her surgical expertise and assistance; Lisa Hethcox, LVT, and Candice Jackson, LVT, for their invaluable help in the both data acquisition and the care and handling of the NHPs; and Chester Calvert and Ryan Whitley for their invaluable assistance in data export and filtering.
Supported by a Grant from the BrightFocus Foundation (G2016165, JCD); by a core grant from the National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health (P30 EY003039, BCS); by the EyeSight Foundation of Alabama (unrestricted departmental funds); and by Research to Prevent Blindness (unrestricted departmental funds).
Disclosure: J.V. Jasien, None; M.A. Fazio, None; B.C. Samuels, None; J.M. Johnston, None; J.C. Downs, None