Physician-researchers with Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, part of UHealth—the University of Miami Health System, have found a link between "dry eye" and chronic pain syndromes—a finding that suggests that a new paradigm is needed for diagnosis and treatment to improve patient outcomes.
"Our study indicates that some patients with dry eye have corneal somatosensory pathway dysfunction and would be better described as having neuropathic ocular pain," said Anat Galor, M.D., M.S.P.H., a cornea and uveitis specialist and associate professor of clinical ophthalmology at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and the lead author of the groundbreaking study, "Neuropathic Ocular Pain due to Dry Eye is Associated with Multiple Comorbid Chronic Pain Syndromes," published recently in the American Pain Society's Journal of Pain.
Roy C. Levitt, M.D., a neuroanesthesiologist, pain specialist, and geneticist also at the Miller School, and corresponding author, noted, "A multidisciplinary approach used for chronic pain treatment may also benefit these dry eye patients."
Galor and Levitt are part of a team of Bascom Palmer Eye Institute and UHealth physicians who treat dry eye.
Their research team evaluated 154 dry eye patients from the Miami Veterans Affairs Hospital. "Dry eye patients in our study reported higher levels of ocular and non-ocular pain associated with multiple chronic pain syndromes, and had lower scores on depression and quality-of-life indices consistent with a central sensitivity disorder," said Levitt, a professor and Vice Chair of Translational Research and Academic Affairs in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative Medicine and Pain Management. "We also suspect that neuropathic ocular pain may share causal genetic factors with other overlapping chronic pain conditions."
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