Abstract
Purpose :
We previously showed that environmental stress (ES) induced dry eye in the wild type mice (Kojima T et al. ARVO poster, 2014). We investigated the effect of pretreatment using topical 2% rebamipide eye drops for the ES induced dry eye in the same mouse model.
Methods :
We used a previously reported ES induced dry eye mouse model in this study (Kojima T et al. ARVO poster, 2014). Briefly, the model mimics visual display terminal work in humans, and each mouse was kept in a small compartment and exposed to continuous air flow for 4 hours. Seven ten week old C57/B6 wild type mice in each group were used for evaluations of the tear volume (with or without menthol stimulation) and fluorescein staining before and after ES exposure. Before ES exposure, pretreatment using topical 2% rebamipide or artificial tears was applied 4 times a day for 5 days. Immunohistochemical expression of transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily M member 8 (TRPM8) was analyzed using whole mount immunohistochemistry of the mouse corneas.
Results :
After exposure to ES, tear secretion with or without menthol stimulation significantly decreased, but the mean tear secretion reduction rate in the rebamipide treatment group was significantly lower than the artificial tear group (p< 0.05). There were no differences in the fluorescein staining scores before ES exposure between the two treatment groups, but rebamipide group showed a significantly lower staining score than artificial tear group after ES exposure (p< 0.05). Whole mount immunohistochemistry showed that TRPM8 staining level in the artificial tear group was lower than the rebamipide group after ESC exposure.
Conclusions :
The current study revealed that topical pretreatment using 2% rebamipide was effective in preventing the ES induced dry eye which may be related to the maintenance of TRPM8 in the cornea as a possible mechanism.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.