"Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is a vision-threatening microvascular complication of diabetes, and more than 50% of diabetic patients develop some degree of retinopathy ten years after the onset of the disease (1). With prevalence of diabetes, DR is a major cause of vision impairment among working age adults and is affecting approximately 4.2 million people in the US and 93 million worldwide, despite remarkable advancement in the diagnostic tools and treatments (2). While progress has been made, detailed molecular mechanisms underlying pathogenesis of DR have not yet been fully deciphered. A number of studies imply that there is a link between progression of DR and complement dysregulation (3). The aim for this dissertation is to provide a novel molecular link connecting complement activation with retinal vascular impairment associated with diabetes. Our studies revealed that extracellular vesicles such as exosomes associate with immunoglobulins in plasma and activate complement pathway, which contributes to the increase in retinal vascular permeability in diabetes." -- Abstract.
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