Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a preventable cause of childhood blindness in extremely preterm infants, yet early biomarkers are lacking. In this pilot study, we utilized targeted metabolomic profiling of blood samples to measure plasma 6-hydroxymethylpterin (6PTC) levels in 18 preterm neonates. Results showed significantly higher 6PTC levels in infants who developed ROP compared to those who did not (p = 0.035), with receiver-operating characteristic analysis yielding an AUC of 0.831. These findings suggest that 6PTC may serve as a non-invasive early biomarker reflecting oxidative stress in ROP. However, the modest sample size warrants further validation in larger, longitudinal cohorts. Given the limited sample size, these results should be interpreted within the context of a pilot, hypothesis-generating study.
Ünkar et al. (2025) studied this question.