Evaluation of glaucoma induced secondary changes on the biological clock and liver metabolism

• Grant number: 22/01930-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2022
• End date: December 31, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Physiology - Physiology of Organs and Systems
• Principal Investigator: Maria Nathália de Carvalho Magalhães Moraes Figueira Borges
• Grantee: Eliz Maria de Oliveira Furtado
• Host Institution: Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas (ICB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 17/26651-9 - Glaucoma as a model of temporal information disruption: impact on the metabolism, AP.JP

Abstract

The organism's understanding of the advance of time makes it possible to distribute systemic functions throughout the day and night, with the periodic organization of physiological, biochemical, and behavioral processes and thus segregating incompatible functions. The main environmental light input is the retina, which through melanopsin-positive ganglion cells, adjusts the mammalian central oscillator, the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN). Through molecular mechanisms of clock genes in the NSQ occurs the generation of the rhythmic function allowing synchronization of organs and systems with each other and with external time. Glaucomatous animals have impaired ganglion cells and hypothalamic structures, such as the NSQ, which receive reduced light signaling. Due to this failure in internal and external time communication, we propose that the peripheral tissues, especially the liver, may present impairments in their functioning as a result of the failure in photoreception and internal temporal misalignment due to glaucoma. Thus, other pathologies parallel to glaucoma may be developed, especially those related to hepatic energy metabolism, and maybe a consequence of local chronodisruption of liver tissue or changes in metabolic pathways resulting from the GPNMB gene mutation (a factor that predisposes the development of glaucoma).(AU)