Abstract
Simple SummaryThis work represents a comprehensive evaluation of hamster retina by state-of-the-art methodologies and provides evidence that hamsters may represent a better model for studies of retinal cholesterol maintenance than mice. The latter is an important finding, as disturbances in retinal cholesterol homeostasis are linked to age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy, which are blinding diseases.Cholesterol homeostasis in the retina, a sensory organ in the back of the eye, has been studied in mice but not hamsters, despite the latter being more similar to humans than mice with respect to their whole-body cholesterol maintenance. The goal of this study was to begin to assess hamster retina and conduct initial interspecies comparisons. First, young (3-month old) and mature (6-month old) Syrian (golden) hamsters were compared with 3- and 6-month old mice for ocular biometrics and retinal appearance on optical coherence tomography and fluorescein angiography. Of the 30 evaluated hamsters, seven had retinal structural abnormalities and all had increased permeability of retinal blood vessels. However, hamsters did not carry the mutations causing retinal degenerations 1 and 8, had normal blood glucose levels, and only slightly elevated hemoglobin A1c content. Cholesterol and six other sterols were quantified in hamster retina and compared with sterol profiles in mouse and human retina. These comparisons suggested that cholesterol turnover is much higher in younger than mature hamster retina, and that mature hamster and human retinas share similarities in the ratios of cholesterol metabolites to cholesterol. This study supports further investigations of cholesterol maintenance in hamster retina.
Highlights
Among rodents, mice and rats are perhaps the most common laboratory animals due to their small size, rapid breeding, low maintenance cost, and ease of genetic manipulations
There are 19 species in the Cricetidae family, with the most used laboratory models being Syrian hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus), Chinese hamsters (Cricetulus griseus), and Djungarian hamsters (Phodopus sungorus) [1]. None of these models have been characterized for cholesterol homeostasis in the retina, a sensory organ lining the back of the eye. This is in contrast to mice, whose retinal cholesterol maintenance has been intensively studied [2,3] but has not yet been compared to that of hamsters, which are more similar to humans than mice in many aspects of whole-body cholesterol maintenance [4]
Genotyping was used because retinal degeneration 1 (Rd1) and retinal degeneration 8 (Rd8) cannot be unambiguously detected by fundus examination if the underlying mutations are heterozygous
Summary
Mice and rats are perhaps the most common laboratory animals due to their small size, rapid breeding, low maintenance cost, and ease of genetic manipulations. There are 19 species in the Cricetidae family, with the most used laboratory models being Syrian (golden) hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus), Chinese (dwarf) hamsters (Cricetulus griseus), and Djungarian (or Siberian) hamsters (Phodopus sungorus) [1]. None of these models have been characterized for cholesterol homeostasis in the retina, a sensory organ lining the back of the eye. This is in contrast to mice, whose retinal cholesterol maintenance has been intensively studied [2,3] but has not yet been compared to that of hamsters, which are more similar to humans than mice in many aspects of whole-body cholesterol maintenance [4]
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