Dry Eye Disease (DED) is a painful, progressive and irreversible eye disorder, if left untreated
Globally, 160 million individuals have eye diseases that range from childhood eye disorders to age-related macular degeneration. .
Dry eye disease (DED), is one of them which is now emerging as a problem affecting many youngsters.
It occurs when the eye does not produce tears properly or when the tears are not of the correct consistency and evaporate too quickly. For some people, dry eye feels like a speck of sand in the eye, or a stinging or burning sensation that does not go away. For others, dry eye can become a painful chronic and progressive condition that leads to blurred vision or even vision loss, if it goes untreated due to inflammation that can cause ulcers or scars on the cornea.
Dry eye as condition is often caused by a disruption in the eye’s fluid balance. A long-term imbalance of too much salt and not enough water (hyperosmolarity) in the thick layer of fluid in the eye (tear film) can lead to inflammation and cell damage that may become irreversible.
Moderate-to-severe dry eye is associated with significant pain, role limitations, low vitality, poor general health, and often depression.
Although researchers have long known about age, sex, and gender as factors, they are now discovering ethnic and racial differences, and that dry eye impacts younger patients.
It can have many causes, including environmental exposure; side-effects from medications; eye surgery; lid disorders; autoimmune diseases such as Sjögren’s syndrome, lupus, or rheumatoid arthritis; contact lens wear; cosmetic use; aesthetic procedures; and now an increasingly common cause is staring at computer or smartphone screens for too long without blinking.
Classification of DED acknowledges that symptoms without signs may be due to neuropathic pain and that signs without symptoms may lead to symptomatic disease and poorer outcomes with ocular procedures.
‘The treatment of dry eye remains something of an art, not easily lending itself to a rigid, evidence-based algorithm that accommodates all patients with dry eye symptoms or signs. All eye care providers who treat patients with dry eye must exercise their clinical skills to judge the significance of each of the varied pathogenic processes that may manifest similar subjective complaints and similar signs of ocular surface dysfunction,” explains Dr. David A. Sullivan, MS, PhD, FARVO, the TFOS DEWS II™ Organizer and Congressional Briefing Moderator.
It’s time we realize DED is a serious disease that requires public awareness & education about it as a priority.
In another study published in the American Journal of Physiology—Cell Physiology it has been found that increased electrical activity in eye’s mucous membranes may relieve short-term dry eye pain, where natural voltage boost helps maintain tear film fluid balance
Extremely fast electrical signals carry messages throughout the body, telling it how to function. This process plays a role in how the body responds to various stimuli. In DED, little is known about how the eye’s surface adapts to the fluid imbalance seen in dry eye.
Donald G. Puro, MD, PhD, from the University of Michigan, studied the bioelectrical responses of cells in the mucous membranes that line the eyelids (goblet cells).
Goblet cells release a protein called mucin—the basis of mucous—which slows down the evaporation of tears and helps maintain the tear film’s balance.
Puro found that electrical activity in the goblet cells increases as hyperosmolarity rises in the tear film, which in turn allows the cells to produce more mucin. However, this voltage boost is short-lived.
If the salt-to-water ratio of the tear film remains unbalanced in the long-term, the goblet cells’ electrical activity returns to normal levels without producing additional mucin.
“Continued progress in elucidating the bioelectric mechanisms by which the ocular surface responds to dryness [and] hyperosmolarity should provide novel strategies for [improving] the uncomfortable sight-impairing condition of dry eye,” Puro wrote.