Neuroprotection of the inner retina:Müller cells and lactate

Rupali Vohra; Miriam Kolko

doi:10.4103/1673-5374.238612

摘要：Müller cells: The neglected neighbor:Müller cells constitute the ma-jority of retinal glial cells and offer more alternating functions than any other cell of the retina. Uniquely, Müller cells cover the complete thickness of the retina, and their roles therefore differ correspondingly to the retinal segment in which they are located. In the inner retina, Müller cells are crucial in taking up toxic molecules, such as excessive glutamate from the synapses between bipolar cells and retinal gan-glion cells (RGCs), thereby preventing glutamate-induced excitoxic RGC death (Bringmann et al., 2009; Skytt et al., 2016; Toft-Kehler et al., 2016; Vohra et al., 2017) (Figure 1). Additionally, Müller cells are crucial in maintaining ion balances and have also been suggested to secrete essential neuroprotective factors as well as to buffer energy sources to the neighboring cells (Bringmann et al., 2006, 2009). De-spite being over looked for decades Müller cells have now been proven essential in overall retinal maintenance, and increasing attention and acknowledgement has been attributed to their mere presence and function.