An Internal Report* on The Effect of GAGases on Outflow Facility in the Bovine Eye

Barany was the first to point out that testicular hyaluronidase increased outflow facility in bovine eyes. It has long been assumed that this was an effect on the extracellular matrix within the aqueous outflow pathway. Based on experiments conducted in primate eyes in which we found no effect of either Streptomyces hyaluronidase or chondroitinase ABC in primates, we were motivated to retrospectively reexamine both our own previous data concerning the effects of GAGases on bovine outflow facility and also to reexamine reports in the literature. After GAGases incubation for several hours, we could not find evidence that GAGases 0increases outflow facility in the bovine beyond the wash-out that naturally occurs during perfusions. More over, for shorter time periods of incubation, the evidence is not convincing that these enzymes have definite effect. It may be instead that GAGases do not have their primary effect on the glycosaminoglycans of the outflow pathway, or they may affect junctions in the inner wall where it would be difficult to detect its effect morphologically, and these junctions may naturally open during wash-out.