Background and objectives: primary congenital glaucoma (PCG) is a rare, potentially blinding disease that affects children worldwide. The aim of the study was to describe the epidemiological and clinical characteristics, outcomes for newly diagnosed patients with PCG, as well as evaluate the prognostic factors that are related to the outcomes. Materials and Methods: a retrospective cohort study was conducted at a tertiary referral centre among patients diagnosed with PCG. Evaluation of the clinical data was performed preoperatively at three, six, and 12 months after the surgery and at the last follow-up. Results: during the 15 years of follow-ups, 24 eyes of 18 patients were diagnosed with PCG. Unilateral and bilateral PCG constituted 50% of cases each. A slight male predominance was observed (55.6% vs. 44.4%), with a relative risk of 1.3. The incidence of PCG was 1:19,033 live births. The mean age of the patients at the time of diagnosis was 10.1 ± 10.0 months, with a diagnostic delay of 2.0 ± 1.9 months. Furthermore, 75% of patients indicated an enlargement of an eyeball, followed by excessive tearing (58.3%) and corneal opacity (41.7%). After 85.9 ± 51.2 months, the mean intraocular pressure (IOP) value was 14.6 ± 4.9 mmHg. Surgical treatment provided sufficient IOP control in 75% of PCG cases at the last follow-up visit. The only prognostic factor that was related to the outcome of IOP control that was statistically significant was axial length at the time of diagnosis. Conclusions: the incidence of PCG in Latvia was 5.3 patients per 100,000 live births. PCG was more common among males than females with a relative risk of 1.3. The enlargement of an eyeball was the leading clinical sign.

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the most common complication of diabetes, being the most prevalent reason for blindness among the working-age population in the developed world. Despite constant improvement of understanding of the pathogenesis of DR, identification of novel biomarkers of DR is needed for improvement of patient risk stratification and development of novel prevention and therapeutic approaches. The ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) is the primary protein quality control system responsible for recognizing and degrading of damaged proteins. This review aims to summarize literature data on modifications of UPS in diabetes and DR. First, we briefly review the structure and functions of UPS in physiological conditions. We then describe how UPS is involved in the development and progression of diabetes and touch upon the association of UPS genetic factors with diabetes and its complications. Further, we focused on the effect of diabetes-induced hyperglycemia, oxidative stress and hypoxia on UPS functioning, with examples of studies on DR. In other sections, we discussed the association of several other mechanisms of DR (endoplasmic reticulum stress, neurodegeneration etc) with UPS modifications. Finally, UPS-affecting drugs and remedies are reviewed. This review highlights UPS as a promising target for the development of therapies for DR prevention and treatment and identifies gaps in existing knowledge and possible future study directions.

We identified an association between the levels of NT-proANP in the plasma and the aqueous humor with POAG. Our data support the idea of the involvement of NP system in the development of POAG and highlight ANP as a possible biomarker of glaucoma.