# Mechanisms of Early Functional Loss in Diabetic Eye Disease

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO · 2022 · $387,758

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Diabetic retinopathy is the most serious ocular complication of diabetes mellitus and is the leading cause of
new cases of legal blindness among working age adults in the United States There is evidence that diabetes
affects retinal neurons before abnormalities of the retinal vasculature can be seen on clinical examination.
However, relatively little is known about these neural deficits and how they affect visual function in diabetic
patients who have mild or no clinically-apparent diabetic retinopathy (M/N DR). The objective of this proposal is
to develop and apply novel approaches for characterizing the nature and extent of visual dysfunction and its
relationship to neural processes in M/N DR patients. Achieving this objective will provide important new insight
into neural dysfunction in these individuals and will establish new tests that are capable of classifying patients
who have not yet developed clinically-apparent retinopathy, a group that cannot be staged or subtyped
according to existing scales. This new insight and the ability to subtype these patients would be of great use in
clinical trials that aim to slow or prevent neurodegeneration in early-stage disease. Three complementary aims
are proposed that use electrophysiological, psychophysical, and pupillometric techniques to provide new views
of retinal function in M/N DR patients and to address important questions generated by our preliminary
investigations: Aim 1 will characterize and understand the effects of M/N DR on rod activation, inactivation, and
post-receptor function. A comprehensive battery of electrophysiological tests will be used to challenge common
assumptions regarding the sites of disease action that underlie ERG abnormalities. Aim 2 will develop and
apply advanced psychophysical techniques for rapid characterization of rod pathway function in M/N DR
subjects. Aim 3 will evaluate functional abnormalities in M/N DR subjects using novel pupillometric techniques.
After accomplishing these aims, we will have: 1) established clinically-applicable approaches to vision
assessment that can quantify neural abnormalities in diabetic patients who have M/N DR; 2) gained new
insight into the sites and mechanisms that underlie impaired visual function in these patients. This line of study
is particularly important and timely as new therapeutic approaches for treating early-stage retinopathy are
being investigated, but the tools that are currently available to subtype patients and evaluate therapeutic
efficacy lag behind.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10394192
- **Project number:** 5R01EY026004-07
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO
- **Principal Investigator:** James JASON McAnany
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $387,758
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2015-12-01 → 2024-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10394192

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10394192, Mechanisms of Early Functional Loss in Diabetic Eye Disease (5R01EY026004-07). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10394192. Licensed CC0.

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