Progression of Diabetic Capillary Occlusion: A Model
Fig 12
(CASE 1) quantitative development of model properties with time.
(A) Average oxygen tension decreased with increasing occlusion events despite occasional small increases, and had an overwhelming drop near the end of simulation. (B) The hypoxic fraction of Mueller cells was observed to grow rapidly after the capillary occlusions induced by locally elevated VEGF, and near the end of simulation about one third of the Mueller cells were ischemic. (C) Total volume inflow rate established a rising trend before a major decline in week 124, after that it remained at a lower level than the starting point and eventually descended to below 90% of initial rate. (D) Average minimal cell-to-vessel distance maintained an increasing trend to reach 3.5 aMC (Mueller cell diameter) units, which qualitatively reproduced the temporal pattern observed for hypoxic fraction of Mueller cells.