Abstract:
Recent evidence in other disciplines has shown a relation between self–rated mood and symptom–reporting. The etiology of dry eye disease is poorly understood, and about 50% of contact lens wearers report experiencing frequent dry eye symptoms. The purpose of this work was to explore the relation between self–rated mood and dry eye symptoms in contact lens wearers.
The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) is a self–reported 20–item survey designed to measure two dimensions of emotion and mood. The positive affect (PA) dimension refers to feeling enthusiastic, active, and alert, and low PA is associated with sadness and lethargy. The negative affect (NA) dimension refers to feelings of distress, anger, contempt, disgust, guilt, fear, and nervousness, and low NA is associated with a state of peacefulness and serenity. In addition to the PANAS, the Contact Lens Dry Eye Questionnaire (CLDEQ) short–form, which classifies dry eye status based on symptoms and self–perception, was administered to the sample a sample of contact lens wearers. Logistic regression was used to examine the relation between dry eye status and positive and negative affect. Adjusted odds ratios (aOR), 95% confidence intervals (95% CI), and p–values are reported. All models include age, gender, education, income, race, and marital status.
This sample consisted of 356 contact lens wearers, of which, CLDEQ scoring classified 192 with dry eye and 164 without dry eye. The average age of the sample was 31.2 ± 11.6 years, and it was 68% female. Logistic regression modeling showed the following results:
Preliminary analyses suggest that self–reported mood is not related to dry eye status in contact lens wearers. Additional analyses are needed in order to examine the relation between a more complete dry eye symptom battery and self–rated mood and the impact of dry eye on affect or mood before strong can be made.
Keywords: cornea: tears/tear film/dry eye