From a clinical perspective, our HFD model shares several similarities with DR, a leading cause of vision loss in metabolic disorders, including upregulation of pro-inflammatory cytokines (e.g., IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α) and vascular factors like ET-1, which contribute to endothelial dysfunction and microvascular leakage in both conditions (23, 24). Here, IL6 is linked to metabolic disease.