Retinal OCT and (mfERG) Related to Age, Sex, and the Use of Anti-inflammatory Medications

Normal optical coherence tomography (OCT) and Multifocal electroretinogram (MfERG) measurements may vary with race, age, sex, parity and the use of hormone therapy in health. It has therefore been recommended to gather normative data on the individual OCT/MfERG equipment in each laboratory. This is the reason why we gathered our local normative material on both machines. We also assessed our normative material on the OCT in relation to age, sex, parity and the use of contraception for future matching with patients.

It has been hypothesized that para-inflammation states are involved in retinal aging in health. We assume that the age-related changes we observed in our normative OCT material are related to low-grade chronic inflammation in the retina. We therefore assessed the effect of to commercially available anti-inflammatory eye drops- diclofenac and dexamethasone,which are often used in inflammation-related states in ophthalmology for their effect on macular thickness in health and with aging.

Uveitis is a frank intraocular inflammation which may lead to macular edema. Macular edema is often transient in uveitis and its presence has been previously reported in severe or long-lasting uveitis. In some cases mecular edema may become chronic or refractory to treatment. However, whether uncomplicated anterior uveitis with no clinically evident macular edema leads to macular thickening detectable with the OCT, or whether monolateral uveitis may cause bilateral macular thickening is not known. We therefore assesed both eyes of patients with anterior uveitis for macular thickening with the OCT.

To correlate macular anatomy with its function some subjects included in the OCT study were also examined with the mfERG. However, at present the MfERG result have not been analyzed.

Inclusion criteria

Adults healthy volunteers and adult patients with anterior uveitis who wish to participate.

Exclusion criteria

• Patients with anterior uveitis who have other systemic diseases/conditions not related to their anterior uveitis, like high blood pressure, diabetes or epilepsy.
• Patients with ocular comorbidity or compliactions to their anterior uveitis, such as elevated ocular pressure or glaucoma.
• Previous or current macular edema or other posterior segment complications related to uveitis.
• Subjects with visual acuity worse than 0.8
• Subjects/patients with cataracts or other ocular media opacities
• Subjects/patients who are allergic to local anesthesia or mydriatics.
• Subjects/patients with high myopia/hyperopia
• Subjects/patients who have had intraocular surgery, although previous uncomplicated LASIK correction for low-grade myopia were accepted.
• Subjects/patients who cooperate poorly.