{"doi":"10.1101/2020.07.17.208207","title":"Antifibrotic activity of a rho-kinase inhibitor restores outflow function and intraocular pressure homeostasis","abstract":"Abstract Glucocorticoids are widely used as an ophthalmic medication. A common, sight-threatening adverse event of glucocorticoid usage is ocular hypertension, caused by dysfunction of the conventional outflow pathway. We report that netarsudil, a rho-kinase inhibitor, rapidly reversed glucocorticoid-induced ocular hypertension in patients whose intraocular pressures were uncontrolled by standard medications. Mechanistic studies in our established mouse model of glucocorticoid-induced ocular hypertension show that netarsudil both prevented and reversed intraocular pressure elevation. Further, netarsudil reversed characteristic steroid-induced pathologies as assessed by quantification of outflow function and tissue stiffness, and morphological and immunohistochemical indicators of tissue fibrosis. Thus, rho-kinase inhibitors act directly on conventional outflow cells to efficaciously prevent or reverse fibrotic disease processes in glucocorticoid-induced ocular hypertension. These data motivate a novel indication for these agents to prevent or treat ocular hypertension secondary to glucocorticoid administration, and demonstrate the antifibrotic effects of rho-kinase inhibitors in an immune-privileged environment.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2020,"id":125166,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":2,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.944,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":570924,"name":"Chan-Young Lee","orcid":"0000-0001-6484-6871","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":336414,"name":"A. Thomas Read","orcid":"0000-0002-2764-6413","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":298708,"name":"Ke Wang","orcid":"0000-0002-5845-7228","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":392993,"name":"Iris Navarro","orcid":"0000-0002-7806-7729","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":571833,"name":"Jenny Cui","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":426840,"name":"Katherine Young","orcid":"0000-0001-6567-3335","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":570925,"name":"Rahul Gorijavolu","orcid":"0000-0002-4386-957X","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":400471,"name":"Todd Sulchek","orcid":"0000-0003-4196-6293","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":570926,"name":"Casey Kopczynski","orcid":"0000-0002-2173-8309","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":418176,"name":"Sina Farsiu","orcid":"0000-0003-4872-2902","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":571834,"name":"John R. Samples","orcid":null,"position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":571835,"name":"Pratap Challa","orcid":null,"position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":336418,"name":"C. Ross Ethier","orcid":"0000-0001-6110-3052","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":292183,"name":"W. Daniel Stamer","orcid":"0000-0002-2504-8997","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":570923,"name":"Guorong Li","orcid":"0000-0002-7206-9168","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":84,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:15:15.482227Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}