Therapeutics
There is more to the tendency to develop contact lens-related keratitis than inappropriate wear and compliance issues. A large-scale analysis of swabs from 112 keratitis patients and 225 controls recruited at Moorfields and in Australia has shown that genetic variations of Defensin 1B lead to decreased protein expression of the gene hBD1. PhD student Nicole Carnt presented the findings, pointing out that this altered gene activity may increase susceptibility to and severity of keratitis in those patients exhibiting the activity and that further animal model studies of hBD gene activity may help explain the reason why some patients tended to corneal inflammation more than others.
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