Chronic alcoholism and central serous chorioretinopathy

Abstract

A 36-year-old alcoholic male suffered from central serous chorioretinopathy (CSCR). Morning serum cortisol was 293.3 ng/ml (normal range: 50-250 ng/ml), which was elevated. After 1-week of treatment with mineralo-corticoid antagonist eplerenone at 25 mg/day, patients witnessed visual acuity in the left eye increased to 6/12, which corroborated with optical coherence tomography showing substantial decrease of sub-retinal fluid. It is first documented case of CSCR associated with chronic use of alcohol that exhibited response to mineralo-corticoid antagonist eplerenone. In this study, though the exact role of alcohol intake in the pathogenesis could not be established, a disturbed the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis as a connecting link between the two conditions are observed. This will pave the way for larger, controlled studies directed to establish an association between alcohol intake and CSCR.