VEGFA and Hyperglycemia: In particular, the treatment with the somatostatin analog octreotide (OCT) has been found to inhibit apoptotic cell death and avoid vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) overexpression in retinal explants exposed to typical diabetic stressors such as hyperglycemia, oxidative stress (OS) or advanced glycation end-products (Amato et al., 2016).