STAT3 and retinal degeneration: To confirm that the HT-induced pathology involves regulated pathomechanisms, we performed western blot analysis to assess the activity of the major signaling pathways ERK1/2, AKT, NFKB, and STAT3, which previously had been associated with various types of retinal degeneration (Kassen et al., 2007; Donovan et al., 2011; Xia et al., 2011; Rhee et al., 2013; Jiang et al., 2014; Rana et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2017; Zeng et al., 2022; Palazzo et al., 2023).