Myopia is caused by an increase in the length of the anterior-posterior axis of the eye (ocular axial length).This puts a physical strain on the back of the eye, leading to complications that can lead to blindness, such as retinal detachment, maculopathy, and optic neuropathy.In addition, the risk of age-related visual impairment increases significantly in people with long axial length, but keeping the axial length short even slightly reduces the risk considerably, so it is necessary to suppress excessive axial length growth. gender has been recognized.

　This time, the research group observed the sclera of myopic model mice using a transmission electron microscope, and found that swelling of the rough endoplasmic reticulum, which is observed when unfolded proteins accumulate in scleral fibroblasts. observed.This condition is called endoplasmic reticulum stress.

　Therefore, when 4-PBA, a low-molecular-weight compound that attenuates endoplasmic reticulum stress, was administered to the eye, it was found to suppress axial length elongation and decrease in refractive power (negative results in myopia), thus suppressing myopia.On the other hand, when scleral endoplasmic reticulum stress was induced by a drug (tunicamycin), elongation of the eye axis and decrease in refractive power were observed, and the induction of scleral endoplasmic reticulum stress caused myopia.This suggests that scleral endoplasmic reticulum stress is the mechanism of myopia onset and progression, and that control of endoplasmic reticulum stress can effectively suppress myopia progression.

　Myopia affects a large number of patients, and there is a risk of visual impairment, but there is currently no drug that effectively and safely suppresses axial elongation.The 4-PBA discovered in this research will lead to the creation of drugs that enable the treatment of myopia, and will have an extremely large social impact.

Paper information:[Nature Communications] Scleral PERK and ATF6 as targets of myopic axial elongation of mouse eyes