Acanthamoeba Keratitis: Case Report

We experienced chronic relapsing central corneal ulcer and chronic conjunctivitis with mucoid discharge. Both patients were transfered to our hospital because of no improvement with long term treatment of broad spectrum antibiotics topically and systemically Specimens from corneal scraping and conjunctival mucoid discharge were examined with calcofluor white staining method. We could find a narrow rim of light green colored cystic wall and orange red colored cytoplasm in dark field fluorescent microscopy in both cases, and those were diagnosed as Acnthamoebic cyst by pathologist. We couldn't find any report about ocular Aanthamoeba infections in Korea. To our knowledge, this is the first case report about ocular Acanthamoebic infections in Korea.

The Effects of Aprotinin of Experimental Corneal Burn in Rabbits

Recently, many works to treat chronic corneal ulcer have been progressed. It has been reported that the Aprotinin, one of them, is serine protease inhibitor and is useful to treat therapy-resistant chronic corneal ulcer because it decreases the plasmin level in tear fluid that was increased in corneal ulcer. We performed this study to evaluate the effect of Aprotinin to the reepithelization of cornea according to its concentration. We made corneal burn in rabbits and instilled topical antibiotics and Aprotinin 500u/ml and 200u/ml, four times a day. After instillation, we compared the process of corneal epithelial wound healing, according to the time interval, clinically and histopathologically in each group. As a result, wound healing of cornea treated with combination of antibiotics and Aprotinin was delayed rather than that treated with antibiotics only. And combination therapy with Aprotinin 500n/ml is more effective than with Aprotinin 2000n/ml. This data suggests that high concentration of Aprotinin alone is not helpful to tresat the therapyresistant chronic corneal ulcer.