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Article History

Accepted: 13 July 2025

First Online: 28 July 2025

Declarations

:

: This study was funded by a Saudi Arabian Government Scholarship to B.A. and an MRC Clinical Research Training Fellowship to S.S. (Grant no. G1002002/1).

: Dr Christopher Watson has received travel expenses from Oxford Nanopore Technologies. Bushra Alayed, Salina Siddiqui, Seema Anand, Chris F. Inglehearn and Manir Ali declare no competing financial interests of relevance to the contents of this manuscript.

: The study has ethical approval from the Leeds East Research Ethics Committee (reference no. 17/YH/0032). Individuals were recruited in the Eye Department at St James’s University Hospital in Leeds, with informed consent using a process that followed the ethical principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.

: All the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the paper and Supplementary Information.

: Not applicable.

: B.A. contributed to study design; acquired, analysed and interpreted data; and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. S.S. acquired and analysed data and commented on the manuscript draft. S.A. acquired data and commented on the manuscript draft. C.F.I. contributed to study conception and design, interpreted data and critically revised the initial manuscript draft for important intellectual content. C.W. contributed to study design, interpreted data and commented on the manuscript draft. M.A. contributed to study conception and design, analysed and interpreted data and critically revised the initial manuscript draft for important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.