Table 1.
Baseline clinical characteristics of the patients with diabetic macular edema.
Fig 1.
Measurement and evaluation of DME at baseline and post-IVR.
OCT findings at baseline and 1 month post-IVR. (A-D) Macular thickness was measured on OCT images using thickness-map mode with an ETDRS 9-zone grid. (B,D) Thickness-map showing the average retinal thickness (μm) in each grid, which projects to the fundus of the eye.
Fig 2.
DME was categorized according to extent and form. The ETDRS grid was divided into two zones: the central circle with a diameter of 1 mm (zone 1); and the outer circle with a diameter of 6 mm (zone 2). Zone 2 allowed the evaluation of larger areas of macular edema. In addition, macular edema was also defined as diffuse if retinal thickness was at least ±30% beyond the reference thickness of zone 1; otherwise, it was defined as non-diffuse.
Fig 3.
Measurement method of cytokine concentration (the example of eotaxin-1).
After plotting the standard curve of eotaxin-1, the fluorescence intensity (FI) of each sample was measured, and the value read from the standard curve was defined as the concentration. S1—S6 are standard samples. S1[9298.11 (concentration), 25760.9 (FI)], S6[3.37 (concentration), 21.9 (FI)]. The detection limit of eotaxin-1 was 3.367 pg/mL. LLOQ = lower limit of quantification ULOQ = upper limit of quantification.
Fig 4.
Changes in aqueous humor cytokine concentrations post-IVR.
Changes in aqueous humor cytokine concentrations in the 13 eyes between baseline and 1 month post-IVR are shown (IL-6 review of 12 eyes). Eotaxin-1 concentration decreased significantly in aqueous humor samples after IVR (n = 13; P = 0.047). IL-6 concentration also tended to decrease after IVR (n = 12; P = 0.075).
Table 2.
Relationship between baseline cytokine concentration and IVR-Induced DME reduction (n = 13).
Table 3.
Relationship between changes in cytokine concentration and changes in macular thickness before and after IVR (n = 13).
Table 4.
Cytokine concentrations according to DME type (n = 13).