Management of chronic anterior uveitis relapses: efficacy of oral vitamin D treatment.

Abstract

Purpose : The role of vitamin D in immunoregulation has led to the concept of a dual function as both as an important secosteroid hormone for the regulation of body calcium homeostasis and as an essential organic compound that has been shown to have a crucial effect on the immune responses. Altered levels of vitamin D3 have been associated, by recent observational studies, with a higher susceptibility of immune-mediated disorders and inflammatory diseases such as uveitis. This study investigated the effect of vitamin D supplementation in patients with chronic anterior uveitis relapses. The primary end point of our work was the evaluation of relapse frequency in all treated patients, before and after Vitamin D treatment.

Methods : A total of 35 patients (21 men and 14 woman) aged 31–65 years and with relapses uveitis were enrolled in the study. They were treated with oral vitamin D (50.000 I.U. every week). Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) levels were measured. All patients completed a 12-month follow-up therapeutic period.

Results : After 12 months of therapy, no eyes showed relapses uveitis. There was also an improvement in symptoms and signs associated with relapses after Vitamin D treatment, including ocular pain, blurring of vision, pericorneal hyperemia and aqueous or vitreous cells, and flare in 42% of patients.No patients had further reduction in visual acuity, 35% showed stabilization, and 65% showed statistically significant improvement (P = 0.0001 by Student’s t-test and P = 0.0005 by Wilcoxon signed rank test).

Conclusions : Our study demonstrate the potential therapeutic role of Vitamin D and its efficacy in eye relapsing diseases.

This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2017 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, May 7-11, 2017.