Association of tear fluid chemokines with age-related visual pathology

Purpose of the work is to study the relationship between the content of chemokines in the tear fluid (TF) in elderly patients with exudative age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Material and methods. The content of chemokines in the TF was determined in 92 patients (184 eyes) aged 60-74 years with exudative AMD and in 84 patients (168 eyes) aged 60–74 years without ophthalmopathology using a certified MAGRIX (USA) device for immunoassay with Luminex technology on the xMAX platform. AMD was diagnosed based on a comprehensive ophthalmological examination and in accordance with the criteria of the classification of the Age-Related Eye Disease Study.

Results. An increase in the production of most of the chemokines under consideration was found in the TF of patients with exudative AMD compared to the corresponding indicators of individuals of the same age without ophthalmopathology: MCP-1/CCL2 up to 712.4 ± 3.4 pg/ml (reference 598.6 ± 3.1 pg/ml, p < 0.01), IP-10/CXCL10 up to 37.9 ± 2.6 pg/ml (reference 11.3 ± 2.3 pg/ml, p < 0.001), SDF-1 /CXCL12 up to 262.5 ± 4.3 pg/ml (reference 208.2 ± 4.7 pg/ml, p < 0.001), Eotaxin/CCL11 up to 6.2 ± 0.4 pg/ml (reference 4.3 ± 0.6 pg/ml, p < 0.01), RANTES/CCL5 to 1.7 ± 0.3 pg/ml (versus 0.6 ± 0.2 pg/ml, p < 0.001). At the same time, the content of chemokines MIP-1 /CCL3 decreased to 2.0 ± 0.3 pg/ml (versus 4.1 ± 0.5 pg/ml, p < 0.001), GRO /CXCL1 to 7.2 ± 0.9 pg/ml (versus 15.8 ± 2.1 pg/ml, αp < 0.001). The coefficients of multivariate regression analysis were the highest for IP-10/CXCL10 ( β = +3.538),  RANTES/CCL5  ( β = +2.859) and GRO    /CXCL1 (β  = -2.419), indicating the greatest association of these TF chemokines with the development of exudative AMD.

Conclusion. The studied TF chemokines can be used as additional diagnostic markers of exudative AMD.

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