Retinal Ganglion Cell Loss and Mild Vasculopathy in Methylene Tetrahydrofolate Reductase (Mthfr)-Deficient Mice: A Model of Mild Hyperhomocysteinemia
Why this work is in the frame
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PURPOSE: Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (Mthfr) is a key enzyme in homocysteine-methionine metabolism. We investigated Mthfr expression in retina and asked whether mild hyperhomocysteinemia, due to Mthfr deficiency, alters retinal neurovascular structure and function. METHODS: Expression of Mthfr was investigated at the gene and protein level using quantitative (q) RT-PCR, in situ hybridization, immunoblotting, and immunohistochemistry (IHC). The Mthfr+/+ and Mthfr+/- mice were subjected to comprehensive evaluation using ERG, funduscopy, fluorescein angiography (FA), spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT), HPLC, and morphometric and IHC analysis of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) at 8 to 24 weeks. RESULTS: Gene and protein analyses disclosed widespread retinal expression of Mthfr. Electroretinography (ERG) revealed a significant decrease in positive scotopic threshold response in retinas of Mthfr+/- mice at 24 weeks. Fundus examination in mice from both groups was normal; FA revealed areas of focal vascular leakage in 20% of Mthfr+/- mice at 12 to 16 weeks and 60% by 24 weeks. The SD-OCT revealed a significant decrease in nerve fiber layer (NFL) thickness at 24 weeks in Mthfr+/- compared to Mthfr+/+ mice. There was a 2-fold elevation in retinal hcy at 24 weeks in Mthfr+/- mice by HPLC and IHC. Morphometric analysis revealed an approximately 20% reduction in cells in the ganglion cell layer of Mthfr+/- mice at 24 weeks. The IHC indicated significantly increased GFAP labeling suggestive of Müller cell activation. CONCLUSIONS: Mildly hyperhomocysteinemic Mthfr+/- mice demonstrate reduced ganglion cell function, thinner NFL, and mild vasculopathy by 24 weeks. The retinal phenotype is similar to that of hyperhomocysteinemic mice with deficiency of cystathionine-β-synthase (Cbs) reported earlier. The data support the hypothesis that hyperhomocysteinemia may be causative in certain retinal neurovasculopathies.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it