All Blog Entries

This is rather an interesting study and since the full text is available free you can easily review the details. They compared a group who took Tears Again Hydrate (flaxseed and evening primrose oil supplement sold on prescription) for six months with a group who took that AND took Restasis for the last 3 months of the 6 month period. In this study it didn't appear that Restasis added much.

Efficacy of a new prescription-only medical food supplement in alleviating signs and symptoms of dry eye, with or without concomitant cyclosporine A. ...

This is an interesting study in IOVS looking at inflammatory cytokines in "pure" lipid-deficient dry eye versus aqueous deficient or combo. Their conclusion was that based on the minimal protein quantities in the "pure" lipid deficient cases (i.e. no aqueous deficiency), the disease process is not based on inflammation.

Proinflammatory Cytokine Profiling of Tears from Dry Eye Patients by Means of Antibody Microarrays.

Purpose.
In the pathogenesis

...

Relation of dry eye to disease activity in juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.

Purpose.
To study the frequency and severity of dry eye in patients with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) and its relation to disease activity.

Patients and Methods.
Evaluation for dry eye was done in 40 patients with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis referred for ocular assessment in the Ophthalmology Clinics, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University. They were 28 girls and 12 boys with

...

Interesting. I know plenty of people who have had acupuncture for dry eye, with mixed results. I have known some who found it very beneficial to their eyes, though more often what I'm hearing is that people are finding it good for stress and perhaps improving coping with dry eye through the reduction of stress.

Efficacy of Acupuncture and Identification of Tear Protein Expression Changes Using iTRAQ Quantitative Proteomics in Rabbits.

Purpose:
To evaluate the

...

OSDI is definitely a less than perfect tool, but hey, it's the best we got (if I'm wrong please email me a link to something better) for the time being. We patients must have a scientifically validated way to quantify our symptoms or doctors simply won't take our pain seriously (especially in the absence of dramatic clinical signs). - This is also a big issue in getting drugs FDA approved - how can you prove improvement to both signs and symptoms if you can't quantify symptoms reliably?
...