Figure 3.

Changes in Ca²⁺ transients activated by plasma from age-related macular degeneration patients. (A) Ca²⁺ transients are given as differences to the baseline in fluorescence ratio between the two excitation wavelengths 340 and 380 nm. Experiments were conducted with plasma (10%) from 16 different patients (30 cells per patient) and normal human plasma (NHP) in ARPE-19 cells. Data are mean ± SD. (B) Ca²⁺ transient changes at the initial peak phase and the late sustained phase. NHP induced a significantly higher change in intracellular free Ca²⁺ in the initial phase compared to patients’ plasma. (C, D) Mean time until maximum Ca²⁺ transient change. Patients’ plasma induced significantly faster maximum Ca²⁺ transients to change compared to NHP. The horizontal line represents the mean change in Ca²⁺ transients from baseline (B) and mean time until peak (C). ***p < 0.001 (Mann–Whitney U test).