Abstract
Purpose :
To determine the relationship between cytokine aqueous humour (AH) levels and Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) features in diabetic macular edema (DME).
Methods :
Case series study of 61 eyes (61 patients) with diabetes mellitus, centre-involving DME and central subfield macular thickness (CSMT) >300mm on spectral domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) that were to be intravitreally treated. Proliferative diabetic retinopathy, intravitreal injection within 6 months and any ocular surgery beyond uncomplicated cataract surgery were defined exclusion criteria. Clinical examination including OCT (standard Macular Cube 518x128 μm scan on Cirrus, Carl-Zeiss Meditec Inc., Dublin, CA, USA) was carried out prior to treatment. OCT scans were evaluated for anatomic features on a dichotomic approach: hyperreflective foci (HRS), inner and outer HRS (iHRS/oHRS), diffuse retinal thickening (DRT), cystoid macular oedema (CMO), submacular fluid (SRF) and vitreomacular interface abnormalities. Anterior chamber tap with AH sampling was performed at intravitreal injection time. Multiplex immunossay was undertaken for interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, interferon gamma-induced protein (IP)-10, monocyte chemoattractant protein (MCP)-1, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF).
Results :
Presence of oHRS (70% cases) was associated to higher AH IL-8 levels (median 18.73 vs 10.68 rg/ml; p=0.050). However, CMO (75% cases) was associated to lower levels of IL-6 (median 6.55 vs 32.41 rg/ml; p=0.034) and MCP-1 (median 3212.92 vs 7092.11 rg/ml; p=0.020). Finally, DRT (56% cases) was related to higher AH levels of IL-6 (median 12.11 vs 4.36 rg/ml; p=0.008) and IL-8 (median 19.02 vs 10.58 rg/ml ; p=0.026).
Conclusions :
Our results suggest that may be a correlation between cytokine AH levels with clinical phenotype in the OCT. Further studies are needed in order to determine the clincal relevance.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.