Optic Nerve Disease and Axon Pathophysiology - International Review of Neurobiology - page 13

5. CONCLUSIONS
Axonal injury is a critical initiating event in a variety of central nervous
system diseases, and in particular, almost all diseases of the optic nerve, in-
cluding the most common cause of irreversible blindness worldwide, glau-
coma. The mechanisms of axonal injury depend on the disease and include
ischemia, inflammation, compression, and trauma. The final common path-
way of axonal injury is processes of retrograde and Wallerian degeneration,
autonomous processes separate from apoptosis. Although there are several
examples of neuroprotective therapies that can block somal degeneration
after axonal injury, there has been less study of putative axoprotective drugs,
which would act to prevent or delay axonal loss in disease.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study was supported by Canadian Institutes for Health Research (MOP 84211),
Canadian Foundation for Innovation, Canadian Research Chairs program, National
Institutes of Health (Grants R21 EY017970 and P30 EY016665), the Retina Research
Foundation, Glaucoma Research Foundation, American Health Assistance Foundation,
and an unrestricted departmental grant from Research to Prevent Blindness, Inc.
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