Abstract
Purpose :
To investigate skin changes in clinically diagnosed dry eye disease (DED) patients and matching controls.
Methods :
Cross-sectional non-interventional study involving 57 women aged 45 to 59 years. Patients were divided into 2 groups: 19 aqueous deficient dry eye (ADDE), 19 evaporative dry eyes (EDE), and age matching control group was composed of 19 non-DED participants. Ophthalmological exams included: Ocular Surface Disease Index (OSDI), Schirmer1, Meibomian gland evaluation, tear film osmolarity, tear break-up time (TBUT), corneal fluorescein and lissamine green staining, and impression cytology(IC). Following, measurements of skin transepidermal water loss (TEWL), corneometry, cutometry and sebumetry were taken. ROC curves were applied to evaluate the ability of dermatological tests to differentiate controls, ADDE and EDE patients.
Results :
Lower TEWL values were found in EDE than ADDE patients (ANOVA-Tukey, p<0.01), whereas sebum production was lower in ADDE patients than non-DED (ANOVA-Tukey, p<0.05). ROC curves of TEWL and sebumetry could discriminate EDE from control (sensitivity: 63.2%; specificity: 68.4%) and ADDE from control (sensitivity: 52.6%; specificity: 84.2%), respectively. Both could differentiate ADDE from EDE (TEWL, sensitivity: 63.2%; specificity: 79.0%; Sebumetry, sensitivity: 63.2%; specificity: 63.2%).
Conclusions :
Transepidermal water loss and sebum production are altered in DED patients and might be helpful in ADDE and EDE subtypes differential diagnose.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.