Mass Eye and Ear: Retinal Imaging and Genetics Data Used to Predict Future Disease Risk
In a new study published in Science Translational Medicine, physician-researchers from Mass Eye and Ear, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, combined retinal imaging, genetics and big data to estimate how likely a person is to develop eye and systemic diseases in the future. They found significant associations between the thinning of different retinal layers and increased risk of developing ocular, cardiac, pulmonary, metabolic, and neuropsychiatric diseases and identified genes that are associated with retinal layer thickness, according to a Mass Eye and Ear news release.
“We showed that retinal images could be used to predict the future risk of both ocular disease and systemic disease,” says first author Seyedeh Maryam Zekavat, MD, PhD, a Harvard Ophthalmology resident at Mass Eye and Ear and postdoctoral scholar at Broad. “This could potentially help with disease prevention—if we know from someone’s retinal image that they are at high risk of developing glaucoma or cardiovascular disease in the future, we could refer them for follow-up screening or preventative treatment.”