Paired-flash electroretinography: A new tool to examine rod function in patients with Stargardt disease

J. J.Kang Derwent, S. Grover, J. R. Hetling, D. G. Birch, E. M. Stone, G. A. Fishman, D. R. Pepperberg

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

Abstract

Previous studies have suggested that Stargardt patients display abnormally slow rod dark adaptation after adapting light that bleaches a substantial fraction of the visual pigment. However, relatively little is known about the recovery of rod responsiveness in this disease following weaker adapting light. In this study we applied a recently developed paired-flash electroretinographic (ERG) technique to investigate the effect of weak adapting light on rod photoreceptor activity, in normal subjects and in patients with Stargardt disease and an ABCA4 mutation. ERG a-wave responses to a bright probe flash in paired-flash trials were recorded from 6 normal subjects and 5 Stargardt/ABCA4 patients. In addition, the instantaneous amplitude-response function at defined times after the adapting light was investigated in three-flash trials. Under dark-adapted conditions, maximal peak amplitudes of the rod-mediated a-wave recorded from Stargardt patients were on average lower than those of normals. However, normalized dark-adapted amplitude-intensity functions exhibited similar sensitivity in both normals and patients. Furthermore, amplitude-intensity functions obtained from normals and patients following adapting light exhibited generally similar extents of desensitization. Despite reductions in average maximal a-wave amplitude in the Stargardt/ABCA4 patients, the recovery of rod flash sensitivity does not differ substantially from that of normals under the investigated experimental conditions.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2129-2130
Number of pages2
JournalAnnual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology - Proceedings
Volume3
StatePublished - 2002
EventProceedings of the 2002 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology 24th Annual Conference and the 2002 Fall Meeting of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES / EMBS) - Houston, TX, United States
Duration: 23 Oct 200226 Oct 2002

Keywords

  • Electroretinography
  • Human subject
  • Retinal disease

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