Investigation of altered retinal microvasculature in female patients with rheumatoid arthritis: optical coherence tomography angiography detection

作者：Hsuan-Yi Lee, Jun Chen, Pin Ying, San‐Hua Xu, Min Kang, Jie Zou, Xu‐Lin Liao, Wen‐Qing Shi, Qian Ling, Yixin Wang, Hong Wei, Yi Shao · 发表于：Bioscience Reports · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1042/bsr20230045 · 被引用次数：9 · 研究领域：Ocular Diseases and Behçet’s Syndrome、Retinal Diseases and Treatments、Rheumatoid Arthritis Research and Therapies

BACKGROUND: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic, systemic autoimmune disorder that primarily causes symmetrical polyarthritis and bone deformity. In RA patients, sight-threatening inflammatory eye complications would be expected. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study is to ascertain the macular retinal vessel density changes in RA patients and controls using optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA), and to investigate the association between disease and microvascular density alterations. METHODS: A total of 12 RA patients (24 eyes) and 12 age- and gender-matched control participants (24 eyes) were recruited to the study. We used the Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study partitioning, hemispheric quadrants and annular partitioning to segment each image into different subregions. The vascular density of superficial retina layer, deep retina layer and conjunctival capillary plexus was quantitatively measured by OCTA and compared with the control group. Correlation analysis was used to explore the relationship between STMI and conjunctival capillaries densities. RESULTS: In the superficial retinal layer, the vascular density of S, I, L, SL, SR, IL and C1-C5 were significantly decreased in the RA group compared with the control group (P<0.05). For the deep retinal layer, the vascular density of S, SL, SR, IL, C1, C2 and C4 also decreased in RA group. A significant positive correlation was indicated between conjunctival vascular and STMI densities (r = 0.713, P<0.05)...