Improvement of ocular blood flow and retinal functions with puerarin analogs

Ischemic retinopathy and, particularly, age-related macular degeneration (A MD) are difficult eye diseases to treat. Since the etiology of these diseas es is inadequate blood circulation in the retina and choroid, drugs which c an improve blood circulation to these tissues should be beneficial to these diseases. Since fovea is avascular, AMD is closely related to choroidal va scular abnormalities, and drugs which show strong effects to increase choro idal blood flow would be particularly useful. Puerarin and all its derivati ves, except ET (puerarin disubstituted with -CH2CH2OH), showed marked incre ase of choroidal blood flow at various time periods. Even ET showed a tende ncy to increase choroidal blood flow, though it was not statistically signi ficant. As for b-wave recovery, all puerarin analogs showed strong recovery of retinal function after ischemic insult for 30 min. These results indica te that puerarin analogs could be used for the treatment of ischemic retino pathy, and AMD in particular.