Abstract
Purpose :
To evaluate oculus surface alterations of contralateral unaffected eyes in unilateral eye chemical injury patients by in vivo confocal microscopy (IVCM) and OCULUS Keratograph. Furthermore, to discover the possible mechanism in acute alkali burn BALB/C mice.
Methods :
Thirty-one person with single eye chemical injury and 30 normal controls were included. In the chemical injury group, their contralateral unaffected eyes were studied and compared to 30 matched controls. All subjects completed the Ocular Surface Disease Index (OSDI) questionnaire and underwent corneal sensitivity, non-invasive tear break-up time (NIBUT), tear film height, fluorescein stain, Schirmer I test, bulbar redness and IVCM examination, which included corneal nerve characteristic and langerhans cell (LC) density. One-hundred BALB/C male mice randomly received either 1N NaOH or 0.9%NaCL on the left eye. Histopathological examination, immunofluorescence of neuron-specific β-tublin III and aqueous humor cytokline of right eyes were analyzed by ELISA post-7 days and 30 days.
Results :
The mean OSDI, Schirmer test, tear film height values (Figure 1.A & B) and bulbar redness scores (Figure 1.C & D) were significantly worse in contralateral unaffected eyes of single chemical injury person compared with the controls (p<0.05). Cornea nerve appeared more branches and severe tortuosity in chemical injury group (Figure 1.F, p<0.05), who also had more cornea sensitivity and central LCs density (Figure 1.H). The cornea nerve in right eye of left cornea alkali burn mice had more branches (Figure 2.G) and severe tortuosity (Figure 2.C), even circle-like (Figure 2.E white arrow) according to immunofluorescence. Furthermore, contralateral cornea chemical injury can make cornea epithelium thinner (Figure 2.D), corneal stromal abnormality (Figure 2.F) and Bowman's layer missing (Figure 2.H yellow arrow) at seven days post-injury. Additionally, IL-10, MCP-1 and MIP-1αof aqueous humor increased in unaffected eyes of BALB/C mice.
Conclusions :
Unilateral chemical injury influence the ocular surface significant changes in the contralateral clinically unaffected eyes. Therefore, closely observation should be given in bilateral eyes.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.