Photoreceptor Function in ROP

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT This is a request for one year's supplemental funding, to perform the retinal threshold measurements that were the centerpiece of Aim 4 of the parent grant, EY-10597-25, “Photoreceptor Function in ROP.” COVID completely shut down the study, and no participants came into the lab for testing. This included the often-fragile infants and children with a history of preterm birth, who are the subject of Aim 4. These infants and children have a history of severe ROP, designated Type 1. In early infancy their retinas had been treated with either laser or intravitreal injection of bevacizumab (IVB). We propose to recruit from a pool of 111 clinically well characterized Type 1 ROP patients, half of them treated using laser, the others treated using IVB. We will measure their dark-adapted visual thresholds at 10° and 30° eccentricities using our previously validated psychophysical procedure. Our overall goal is to learn more about the development of retinal function in Type 1 ROP, particularly the relationship of retinal function to refractive development. Early high myopia is a recognized complication of Type 1 ROP, especially following laser treatment; myopia is less frequent and less severe in those treated using IVB. Our preliminary data, presented in the application, led us to these testable hypotheses: (1) The near central threshold, 10° eccentric, will be significantly elevated in the laser treated but not the IVB treated; comparisons will be made to thresholds in healthy, term-born controls. (2) The more eccentric threshold, 30° eccentric, is significantly associated with spherical equivalent. We will use linear mixed-effects modeling to evaluate these hypotheses. Factors in the analyses will be group (laser vs. IVB), age at threshold test, as well as patients' clinical characteristics, including spherical equivalent and acuity. This supplemental effort will nicely complement the retrospective analyses of refractive and acuity development that we were able to complete using data gathered pre-COVID.