New Pathogenic Candidates for Diabetic Macular Edema Detected By Proteomic Analysis

Diabetic macular edema (DME) is the main cause of visual impairment in diabetic patients. The aim of the present study was to explore the differential proteomic pattern of the vitreous fluid from DME patients by means of proteomic analysis. For this purpose, we used fluorescence-based difference gel electrophoresis (DIGE). This technique provides accurate quantitative comparisons, and we further optimized it in order to avoid potential confounding factors (1). Samples of vitreous from eight type 2 diabetic patients (four with DME without proliferative diabetic retinopathy [PDR] and four with PDR without DME), and eight from nondiabetic subjects with idiopathic macular hole (control group) were selected from our vitreous bank for proteomic analysis. …