Using Retinal diagnostics as a Biomarker for Neurodegenerative Diseases: Protocol for a systematic review

Abstract

Introduction Retinal neurodegeneration has recently been shown to occur in tandem with neurodegenerative disease. In the expectation that disease modifying treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease will soon become available, it will be important to have clinically useful biomarkers for neurodegenerative disease subtyping to guide early diagnosis, inform on prognosis and stratify subgroups for treatment. Understanding differences in detectable retina changes in individuals with different neurodegenerative disease subtypes is therefore fundamental. The emerging field of oculomics posits that systemic and neurodegenerative disease can be characterised using detectable ocular biomarkers within retinal diagnostics. The aim of this review is to compare the performance of common retinal imaging modalities in neurodegenerative disease detection and subtyping.