Abstract
Abstract: :
Purpose: Branch retinal vein occlusion (BRVO) shares similar risk factors as cardiovascular disease, in particular hypertension. Recently, an association between cardiovascular disease and exposure to a common respiratory pathogen, Chlamydia pneumoniae, has gained attention in the infectious disease and cardiology literature. The ophthalmic literature; however has not explored the relationship between BRVO and C. pneumoniae. The following report investigates the prevalence of serologic evidence of C. pneumoniae exposure in subjects with BRVO. Methods: An age-matched case control study conducted at Wilford Hall Medical Center with patients with BRVO and controls who have no evidence of BRVO. At the time of this abstract 19 patients diagnosed with BRVO within the past 12 months underwent serologic testing for past exposure to C. Pneumoniae. Their results will be compared with an equal number of age-matched controls from the Wilford Hall Medical Center patient population. Sera are considered positive if the C. Pneumoniae IgG titers are > 1:32 using microimmunofluorescent assay. Results: In the BRVO group, at the time of this abstract, 89% (17/19) of the subjects were positive to C. pneumoniae IgG antibody testing which was higher than the 50% (8/16) demonstrated in the control population. In addition, 61% of the BRVO group tested positive to C. pneumoniae IgA versus 33% in controls. These differences were statistically significant to the p=0.005 level. Conclusions: Patients with BRVO have serologic evidence of past exposure to C. pneumoniae at a significantly higher rate than controls. Whether an infectious etiology for BRVO exists will require further study.
Keywords: inflammation • bacterial disease • ischemia