In Fuchs dystrophy with visual degradation due to central guttae, descemetorhexis without grafting is a viable procedure for visual rehabilitation. Careful patient selection is required, but the advent of topical ripasudil as a salvage agent suggests that a broader application of the surgery may be possible. Further study into the use of this agent is now needed.

The anterior corneal surface shifts from with-the-rule to against-the-rule astigmatism with aging, whereas the posterior corneal surface remains as against-the-rule astigmatism in most cases. The variation in the anterior astigmatism is the most important factor contributing to this change. Total corneal astigmatism is a better predictor than keratometric astigmatism for selecting toric intraocular lenses.

Intrableb fibrosis can be noninvasively evaluated with PS-OCT. Evaluation of birefringence by measuring phase retardation alterations using PS-OCT suggests new approaches for the postoperative management of glaucoma blebs regarding antifibrotic treatment for preventing IOP increases.

No abstract

This paper presents the theory and numerical implementation of a maximum likelihood estimator for local phase retardation (i.e., birefringence) measured using Jones-matrix-based polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography. Previous studies have shown conventional mean estimations of phase retardation and birefringence are significantly biased in the presence of system noise. Our estimator design is based on a Bayes' rule that relates the distributions of the measured birefringence under a particular true birefringence and the true birefringence under a particular measured birefringence. We used a Monte-Carlo method to calculate the likelihood function that describes the relationship between the distributions and numerically implement the estimator. Our numerical and experimental results show that the proposed estimator was asymptotically unbiased even with low signal-to-noise ratio and/or for the true phase retardations close to the edge of the measurement range. The estimator revealed detailed clinical features when applied to the in vivo anterior human eye.

S100B is an astrocytic calcium-binding protein which has been proposed as a biochemical marker of brain damage or dysfunction in acute and chronic diseases. We investigated whether serum S100B levels could be related to systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) activity. Patients were grouped as having inactive SLE (ISLE), active SLE without central nervous system (CNS) involvement (ASLE), or active SLE with unequivocal neurologic or psychiatric manifestation (NPSLE). The control group consisted of age-and sex-matched healthy blood donors. S100B levels were determined using a luminescence immunoassay. All SLE groups had higher levels of serum S100B than the control group. Among the SLE groups, significantly higher levels of serum S100B protein were found in the NPSLE group than in the ISLE and ASLE groups, and there was no significant difference in S100B levels between the ISLE and ASLE groups. These preliminary results point to a putative relevance of serum S100B protein levels in SLE patients, specifically concerning CNS involvement present in this disease.Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a systemic autoimmune disease characterized by the production of a variety of autoantibodies, several biochemical abnormalities, and involvement of multiple organ systems (9). The involvement of the central nervous system (CNS) in SLE, causing neuropsychiatric syndromes (NPSLE), is one of the most serious complications of this disease. The NPSLE can vary from mild forms, such as headaches or mild cognitive deficits, to severe states, such as cerebritis, vascular accidents, or psychosis. Recently, a significant positive association of levels of serum antibodies against the specific astrocytic protein glial fibrillary acidic protein with NPSLE was reported (16), suggesting a neural involvement in its pathophysiology. S100B is a calcium-binding protein expressed and released predominantly by astrocytes (5), and its neurotrophic and gliotrophic actions have been implicated in development and maintenance of the nervous system (2, 4). Furthermore, elevated levels of S100B in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and serum could indicate astrocyte activation or blood-brain barrier dysfunction, which allows its study as a marker of CNS injury in some acute and chronic diseases, including brain ischemia (8, 23, 24), brain hemorrhage (3), multiple sclerosis (11), Alzheimer's disease (2, 17), and schizophrenia (12). Accordingly, we previously have demonstrated that serum S100B levels are elevated in patients with human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1)-associated myelopathy or tropical spastic paraparesis but not in asymptomatic HTLV-I-positive patients (21). The present work was performed in order to investigate serum S100B levels in SLE patients with and without CNS activity. MATERIALS AND METHODS Subjects.We measured serum S100B levels in 32 SLE patients monitored at the Rheumatology Service of the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre. All patients fulfilled the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) (1) criteria for SLE. Patients were grouped...

No abstract

Posterior elevation was the best discrimination parameter for forme fruste keratoconus. Both instruments presented good correlation and repeatability for this condition.