Posters

Role of environmental factors and genetic makeup in pathogenesis of ocular pseudoexfoliation syndrome in Saudi military and their families

Poster Details

First Author: H.Alfaleh SAUDI ARABIA

Co Author(s):    S. Al Saleh   N. Al-Dabbagh   S. Al-Shamrani   N. Khan   M. Arfin   A. Al-Asmari     

Abstract Details

Purpose:

To find out the role of environmental factors and genetic makeup in pathogenesis of ocular pseudoexfoliation syndrome (PEX) in Saudi Military and their families .

Setting:

Department of Ophthalmology, Research Center, Prince Sultan Military Medical City, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Methods:

A total of 1967 military personnel and their families visiting primary care clinic of prince Sultan Military Medical City were screened for the presence of PEX. Fifty one confirmed cases were studied to determine the role of HLA in the etiology of PEX. HLA-DRB1 typing was performed by sequence specific oligonucleotide primer (PCR-SSOP) method on PEX patients and 101 matched controls.

Results:

The prevalence of PEX in studied population was 3.51% and showed age dependent increase in the prevalence of PEX. However, there was no significant difference in the prevalence of PEX in male and female. The majority of patients (62%) have unilateral PEX. PEX was associated with higher intraocular pressure, cataract and poor vision. Chronic exposure to strong UV light causes a change in the cornea known as climatic droplet keratopathy. There was no definitive association between environment/diet/lifestyle and prevalence of PEX in our study. HLA-DRB1 typing showed an increased frequencies of DRB1 *02 (P=0.047), DRB1 *03 (P=0.0001) indicating that DRB1 *02 and DRB1 *03 may be susceptible to PEX.

Conclusions:

There is no definitive association between environment/diet/lifestyle and prevalence of PEX. The presence of HLA-DRB1 *02 and DRB1 *03 alleles is clearly associated with the susceptibility of PEX in this Saudi population. Further study using large number of subjects is in progress to determine the role of genetic factors in PEX.

Financial Disclosure:

NONE