Mast cell (MC) play a crucial role in non-allergic fundus diseases, including uveitis, diabetic retinopathy, and age-related macular degeneration. MCs can profoundly influence the pathological processes of these diseases by regulating inflammatory responses, promoting angiogenesis, and facilitating tissue remodeling through the degranulation and release of mediators such as histamine, cytokines, and enzymes. The application of MC-associated inhibitors has been shown to effectively mitigate or inhibit the progression of these pathologies, offering a promising strategy for treating ocular diseases. Understanding the current state of MC research in fundus diseases will enhance our insight into their role in the pathophysiological mechanisms of these conditions and encourage further research aimed at providing more effective treatment options for patients.
Choroidal vascularity index （CVI）, as a new biological parameter to quantitatively evaluate the state of choroidal vessels, has shown great potential in the diagnosis and treatment of ophthalmic diseases in recent years. CVI primarily calculated from images obtained via optical coherence tomography (OCT) and OCT angiography, demonstrates enhanced accuracy, stability, and clinical value with the advancement of three-dimensional imaging and artificial intelligence technologies. Compared with two-dimensional CVI, three-dimensional CVI comprehensively reflects the spatial distribution and structural changes of choroidal blood vessels by constructing three-dimensional choroidal models through ultra-widefield scanning. In various ophthalmic diseases, including age-related macular degeneration, central serous chorioretinopathy, diabetic retinopathy, and pathological myopia, CVI exhibits characteristic changes that not only contribute to understanding disease pathogenesis but also serve as indicators for early screening, individualized treatment, and efficacy monitoring. The application of artificial intelligence and deep learning technology improves the efficiency of automated CVI analysis, while integration with multimodal imaging further optimizes disease evaluation. Future efforts should focus on establishing standardized measurement protocols and quality control systems to promote its broader application and development in ophthalmology.
Retinal diseases are severely limited in terms of effective treatment strategies due to their extremely complex pathogenesis. Given the limitations of traditional mammalian experimental animals in replicating certain characteristics of eye diseases, the zebrafish model, with its advantages such as fully transparent embryos facilitating in vivo tracking, extremely early development of visual functions, highly conserved retinal cell composition compared to humans, and the ability to regenerate neurons completely after damage, has risen to become a core tool for visual system research. Through modern technologies such as gene editing, RNA knockdown, and chemical induction, researchers have successfully constructed a zebrafish model system that highly mimics various genetic and non-genetic retinal disorders in humans. In non-genetic disorders, this model effectively replicates microvascular abnormal proliferation and electrophysiological changes caused by high sugar or low oxygen stress, and has been successfully applied to the efficacy evaluation of natural products and nanodelivery systems. In the exploration of genetic disorders, for complex diseases such as photoreceptor degeneration, nutritional disorders of cone and rod cells, early severe vision loss, defect in signal transduction-induced night blindness, and multi-system ciliary abnormalities syndrome, the zebrafish model precisely reproduces the corresponding clinical phenotypes. More importantly, it plays a decisive role in elucidating the functions of new pathogenic genes, clarifying the disorder of the light conduction pathway, revealing the multi-gene collaborative pathogenic network, and discovering new candidate pathogenic sites. Additionally, in the in vivo safety testing of nonsense mutation read-through drugs and functional rescue verification, the zebrafish model also demonstrates high clinical translational potential. The zebrafish model, by closely linking genetic variations with in vivo pathological phenotypes, has overcome the limitations of in vitro research. It not only provides an ideal platform for in-depth analysis of the pathogenesis of blinding diseases, exploration of molecular switches for neural regeneration, and provides a solid foundation for accelerating high-throughput screening of targeted drugs and promoting individualized precision medicine, but also has extremely broad application prospects in the future.