Background. Keratoconus is a relatively common corneal disease causing significant visual disability. Individuals with connective tissue disorders that affect the skin such as Marfan's syndrome and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome or patients with atopic dermatitis show an increased prevalence of keratoconus. It seems that there are some concurrent alterations of skin and cornea in patients with keratoco...

Keratoconus, historically viewed as a non-inflammatory disease, is an ectatic corneal disorder associated with progressive thinning of the corneal stroma. Recently, a few inflammatory mediators have been reported to be elevated in the tear fluid of keratoconus patients. Consequently, we investigated a wide range of inflammation regulating cytokines in the tears and sera of keratoconus and contr...

PURPOSE Keratoconus is characterized by thinning and scarring of the central region of the cornea. Previous research showed that, in corneas obtained from patients with keratoconus, lysosomal enzyme activities are elevated, whereas levels of protease inhibitors such as alpha1-proteinase inhibitor are reduced. This study was undertaken to examine further the expression of a spectrum of proteolyt...

Purpose. To build new models with the Ocular Response Analyzer (ORA) waveform parameters to create new indices analogous to established topographic keratoconus indices. Method. Biomechanical, tomographic, and topographic measurements of 505 eyes from the Homburger Keratoconus Centre were included. Thirty-seven waveform parameters (WF) were derived from the biomechanical measurement with the ORA...

Francois Malecaze MD commenced the session with an update on current research into the genetics of keratoconus. Dr Malecaze noted that forme fruste keratoconus is one of the major causes of post-LASIK corneal ectasia and the condition may be due to genetic factors in the majority of cases. Identification of the gene or genes responsible for keratoconus might lead to the development of blood tes...

purpose: to determine the sensitivity and specificity of posterior corneal elevation in discriminating keratoconus and subclinical keratoconus from normal corneas by galilei and orbscan ii diagnosed on the basis of topography. methods: three groups (keratoconus, subclinical keratoconus and normal) were evaluated with galilei and orbscan ii and results were compared to those obtained by gold sta...

PURPOSE Keratoconic corneas exhibit more mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) damage than do normal corneas and thus mtDNA may represent a potential candidate for genetic susceptibility studies in keratoconus. To test this hypothesis we determined mitochondrial haplogroups in Saudi patients with keratoconus and healthy controls of same ethnicity. METHODS Mitochondrial haplogrouping was performed by poly...

Report keratoconus in two patients with a long history of wrestling without any risk factor for corneal ectasia and reviewing the possible pathogenesis. To confirm suspicion of keratoconus, corneal topography was performed using scanning slit topography system and Orbscan. In two wrestlers with the complaint of visual loss in their eyes and IOP raising, corneal topography was performed and de...

PURPOSE To determine the prevalence and risk factors for sleep apnea in a keratoconus population. METHODS Ninety-two keratoconus patients and 92 controls were classified as high risk or low risk for sleep apnea, using the Berlin Questionnaire (BQ) or individual history of sleep apnea. Logistic regression was used to investigate the risk factors associated with high risk of sleep apnea in kera...

Keratoconus is an ectatic corneal dystrophy associated with stromal thinning and disruption of Bowman's layer. The purpose of this study was to explore a possible association between keratocyte apoptosis and keratoconus. Keratocyte apoptosis was evaluated in corneas of patients with keratoconus, corneas of patients with stromal dystrophies, and normal donor corneas using the transferase-mediate...