This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Peripheral cells remain in donor corneas
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
While epithelial cell loss increases in donor corneas post-mortem, a rim of peripheral cells remained, a study found.
Jon Klokk Slettedal and colleagues at the Center for Eye Research in Oslo, Norway, examined 51 corneas harvested between 14 and 163 hours post-mortem using scanning electron and light microscopy. They found that cell loss happened through desquamation of flat superficial cells in the first days.
As post-mortem progressed, more epithelial cells were lost. For corneas in post-mortem more than 2 to 3 days, large superficial cell sheets and deeper cells began detaching centrally. The researchers said that the loss of superficial cell sheets showed the three-dimensional structure of the epithelium and membrane characteristics of deeper cells.
“The intercellular adhesion between deeper cells and adhesion between the basal cells and the basement membrane appeared to be weak post-mortem,” they said.
The researchers also found that the cell membrane structures of the remaining cells were “well retained.”
The study is published in the August issue of Acta Ophthalmologica Scandinavica.