Clinical Uses of Autologous Serum Eye Drops as Tears in Ophthalmology

A stable tear film is a prerequisite to maintain the ocular surface health. The ocular surface stability depends of neuroanatomical interaction of the compositional factors and hydrodynamics factor. [for reviews see ] Among compositional factors, healthy ocular surface epithelia with normal proliferation and differentiation are an important component. There are several proteinaceous and non-proteinaceous factors in the tears that are essential to maintain the normal epithelial health. For example, the tears contain essential components such as epidermal growth factor (EGF), vitamin A, TGFβ{782}, fibronectin, and others cytokines. These factors regulate the proliferation, differentiation and maturation of the ocular surface epithelia. In patients with very severe aqueous tear deficiency secondary to lacrimal gland dysfunction, these factors are severely depleted, and thus may explain in part the difficulty of the ocular surface to be kept in a healthy state. Because these factors are also present in the serum , many studies shown below have formulated artificial tears by diluting patient’s autologous serum with saline solution to treat a number of ocular surface diseases.