Recently, the research results on the glaucoma immunology mechanism made by the Department of Ophthalmology of the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University have drawn much international attention in the fields of ophthalmology and neurology. The top immunology journalNature Review Immunology(impact factor 41.982) published a special article on such results. Such original results were first published in the world's top scientific journalNature Communications, revealing that "CD4+ T cell immune dysfunction following IOP elevation is an important factor forglaucomatous neurodegeneration”. Chen Huihui, an Attending Physician of the Department of Ophthalmology of the Second Xiangya Hospital, is the first author, and the Second Xiangya Hospital is the first unit.

For a long time, IOP elevation has been considered to be a major factor for glaucoma. Currently, the main practice in glaucoma treatment is to reduce IOP. However, many patients get worse after IOP returns to a normal level, while some subject to IOP elevation may have no optic nerve damage for a long period of time. Therefore, the hypothesis that the IOP elevation causesglaucomatous neurodegenerationis not concluded yet, and there is a lack of effective intervention therapy in clinical practice. Against this context, this study proposed the scientific discourse that “glaucoma is an autoimmune disease” through a lot of convincing animal experiment data and clinical data, which would change the current diagnostic, preventive and therapeutic patterns of glaucoma, and lays a theoretical and experimental basis for the treatment of glaucoma and other degenerative neurological diseases.

This study was completed by 14 world-renowned scientific research institutions such as the Department of Ophthalmology of the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University (the first unit), the Schepens Eye Research Institute of Harvard Medical School, and the Department of Biology of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chen Huihui, an Attending Physicianof the Department of Ophthalmology of the Second Xiangya Hospital, has worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology for five years, where she has obtained a series of original research results in the field of glaucoma. Since she returned to China, she has actively promoted the cooperation and exchanges of the Department of Ophthalmology of the Second Xiangya Hospital with the top ophthalmological institutions in the United States, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc. Some of the important clinical laboratory data of this study were completed by the Department of Ophthalmology of the Second Xiangya Hospital.

Source: The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University