Ocular gene therapy is rapidly becoming a reality. By November 2012, approximately 28 clinical trials were approved to assess novel gene therapy agents. Viral infections such as herpetic keratitis caused by herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) can cause serious complications that may lead to blindness. Recurrence of the disease is likely and cornea transplantation, therefore, might not be the ideal t...

INTRODUCTION We report a case of bilateral herpetic keratitis developing after rapid oral corticosteroid tapering in a patient with pemphigus foliaceus, which was followed by unilateral neurotrophic keratitis that was treated with amniotic membrane transplantation. CASE PRESENTATION A 71-year-old Korean man developed bilateral herpetic keratitis one week after rapid tapering of systemic corti...

Thirty patients with bilateral herpetic keratitis were evaluated, 40% of whom were atopic. Stromal keratitis occurred in 40% of the eyes and recurrent ulceration in 68%. Four patients (5 eyes) developed secondary microbial keratitis. Visual acuity decreased to 6/60 or less because of corneal opacification in 17% of the eyes.

Filamentary keratitis (FK) is a chronic and recurrent disorder of the cornea. FK is reportedly associated with various kinds of ocular surface diseases or conditions. Until now, there have been lacks of studies based on quantitative sample analysis concerning FK incidence regularity and inducement characteristics at different ages. This was a retrospective study of 147 patients (162 eyes) with ...

Levamisole, which is an anthelminthic, can restore depressed cell-mediated immunity (CMI) under some circumstances. In a controlled trial of experimental herpetic keratis in rabbits, levamisole was found to have no significant effect on acute herpetic keratitis or its recurrence rate. This is consistent with previous findings that other nonspecific CMI stimulation had no effect on recurrences o...

PURPOSE Models of recurrent herpetic keratitis that depend on tissue damage or immunosuppression have been described. The authors report a model that depends only on minimal temperature stress to produce clinical recurrences in a small primate. METHODS Squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) infected by the ocular route with the Rodanus strain of herpesvirus type 1 (HSV-1) were exposed to tempera...