[The relationship of exudative age-related macular degeneration with lacrimal fluid chemokines in elderly patients.]

Abstract

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD), along with other age-associated ophthalmologies, is a significant cause of loss of visual functions among the elderly, but the relationship of exudative AMD with lacrimal fluid chemokines has not been sufficiently studied. The aim of the work was to study the relationship of exudative AMD with lacrimal fluid chemokines in elderly patients. The content of chemokines in the lacrimal fluid was studied in 92 patients (184 eyes) 60-74 years old with exudative AMD and 84 patients (168 eyes) 60-74 years old without ophthalmopathology using a certified MAGRIX (USA) immunoassay device with Luminex technology on the xMAX platform. AMD diagnosis was performed based on the results of a comprehensive ophthalmological examination and in accordance with the classification criteria (Age-Related Eye Disease Study). Regression analysis and the program Statistica 10.0 were used in the processing of the obtained data. An increase in the production of most of the considered chemokines in patients with exudative AMD in lacrimal fluid was found in relation to representatives of the same age without ophthalmopathology, namely: MCP-1/CCL2 to 712,4±3,4 pg/ml reference 598,6±3,1 pg/ml (p<0,01), IP-10/CXCL10 to 37,9±2,6 pg/ml reference 11,3±2,3 pg/ml (p<0,001), SDF-1α/CXCL12 to 262,5±4,3 pg/ml reference 208,2±4,7 pg/ml (p<0,001), Eotaxin/CCL11 to 6,2±0,4 pg/ml reference 4,3±0,6 pg/ml (p<0,01), RANTES/CCL5 to 1,7±0,3 versus 0,6±0,2 pg/ml (p<0,001). On the contrary, the content of MIP-1a/CCL3 chemokines decreased to 2±0,3 versus 4,1±0,5 pg/ml (p<0,001), GROa/CXCL1 to 7,2±0,9 versus 15,8±2,1 pg/ml (p<0,001). The coefficients of the performed multidimensional regression analysis turned out to be the highest for IP-10/CXCL10 (β=+3,538), RANTES/CCL5 - (β=+2,859) and GROa/CXCL1 - (β=-2,419), which indicates the greatest association of these lacrimal fluid chemokines with the development of exudative AMD. These lacrimal fluid chemokines can be used as additional diagnostic markers of exudative AMD.