Assessment of corneal endothelial cell density in patients with keratoconus not using contact lenses

Endothelial alterations in 712 keratoconus patients

“…Specular and confocal microscopic studies with small numbers of eyes show inconsistent results concerning the effect of keratoconus on corneal ECD (Hollingsworth et al 2005;Uc ßakhan et al 2006;Weed et al 2007;Mocan et al 2008;Niederer et al 2008;Timucin et al 2013;El-Agha et al 2014). The literature results vary from lower to higher ECD in keratoconus.…”

“…described normal ECD in 65 keratoconus patients without contact lenses compared to 40 controls (Timucin et al. ).…”

“…Stromal hypoxia, hypercapnia and thinning are well known to be associated with CL with low oxygen permeability, which should explain the relationship between CL and changes in corneal endothelium (Liesegang ; Timucin et al. ). Additional factors such as CL‐induced mechanical trauma may contribute to endothelial alteration (McMonnies ).…”

“…However, these studies provided non-uniform results. Eight different studies found either increased (Hollingsworth et al 2005), decreased (Uc ßakhan et al 2006Mocan et al 2008;Niederer et al 2008) or normal (Weed et al 2007;Yeniad et al 2010;Timucin et al 2013;El-Agha et al 2014) endothelial cell densities (ECDs) in keratoconus patients. The sample sizes of these studies ranged between 29 and 68 cases.…”

Polymorphism of the Transferrin Gene in Eye Diseases: Keratoconus and Fuchs Endothelial Corneal Dystrophy

“…The disease is characterized by deformation of the normal shape of the cornea resulting from thinning of the corneal stroma [25]. In most cases KC affects both eyes, inducing irregular astigmatism and myopia [26, 27]. Numerous reports on familial aggregation, twin studies, and genetic analyses indicate the role of genetic compounds in KC pathogenesis [28, 29].…”