Expression and the value of inflammatory factors and diseaseactivity in dry eyes of patients with rheumatoid arthritis / 中华风湿病学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To study the expression and value of inflammatory factors and disease activity in dry eyes of rheumatoid arthritis patients.Methods:From March 2017 to November 2019, 78 patients with rheumatoid arthritis complicated with dry eye diagnosed by the rheumatology department of our hospital, 80 patients with simple dry eye treated in the ophthalmology clinic and 80 normal volunteers were collected. All subjects were examined for OSDI questionnaire scores, tear film rupture time (BUT), tear secretion test (SIT), and corneal fluorescein staining (FL) scores. Erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C-reactive protein (CRP), rheumatoid factor (RF) and other disease activity-related indicators were collected. The concentrations of interleukin-1b (il-1b), tumor necrosis factor-a (tnf-a), chemokine 3(CCL3), CCL4, CCL5, and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in the collected tears were detected by double-antibody sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). One-way Anova was used to analyze the correlative indexes among the three groups, LSD- t method was used for multiple comparison. Pearson's method was used to analyze the correlation between Ra activity and dry eye. Results:The results of OSDI [(44±9) points vs (44±9) points vs (24±7) points], SIT [(3.3±2.2) mm/5 min vs (3.6±2.1) mm/5 min vs (11.7±1.6) mm/5 min], BUT [(4.3±1.8) s vs (5.9±1.9) s vs (10.4±2.0) s], FL [(7.3±3.1) points vs (5.7±2.8) points vs (1.6±1.6) points] were com-pared among the three groups. There were significant differences among the three groups( F=154.22, P<0.01; F=470.49, P<0.01; F=217.72, P<0.01; F=101.99, P<0.01). The concentrations of IL-1β [(1.92±0.14) ng/L vs (1.28±0.18) ng/L vs (0.64±0.15) ng/L], IL-6 [(38.24±0.69) ng/L vs (36.31±0.82) ng/L vs (30.43±0.87) ng/L]、TNF-α [(0.78±0.03) ng/L vs (0.67±0.03) ng/L vs (0.56±0.02) ng/L], CCL3 [(91±25) ng/L vs (83±21) ng/L vs (24±18) ng/L], CCL4 [(187±76) ng/L vs (137±64) ng/L vs (37±5) ng/L], CCL5[(259±70) ng/L vs (182±42) ng/L vs (135±34) ng/L] and VEGF [(172±25) ng/L vs (152±22) ng/L vs (41±21) ng/L] in the tears of the three groups were significantly different( F=1 300.15, P<0.01; F=2 036.37, P<0.01; F=1 305.89, P<0.01; F=764.01, P<0.01; F=225.47, P<0.01; F=138.48, P<0.01; F=121.04, P<0.01). The indexes of disease activity (ESR, CRP, RF) were compared among the three groups. The positive rate of RF[(100%) vs (5%) vs (4%)] was significantly higher in Ra dry eye group than in the other two groups ( χ2=127.38, P<0.01) There were significant differences in ESR[(51±23) mm/1 h vs (9±4) mm/1 h vs (8±5) mm/1 h] and CRP[(44±23) g/L vs (5±4) g/L vs (6±4) g/L] among the three groups ( F=253.18, P<0.01; F=222.36, P<0.01) . BUT was negatively correlated with the activity index (ESR, CRP, RF) in rheumatoid arthritis dry eye group ( r=-0.398, P=0.005; r=-0.353, P=0.010; r=-0.302, P=0.038) , FL was positively correlated with activity index (ESR, CRP, RF) ( r=0.345, P=0.014; r=0.385, P=0.007; r=0.412, P=0.003) . There was no correlation between SIT, OSDI and activity index (ESR, CRP, RF)( r=-0.265, P=0.060; r=-0.156, P=0.318; r=-0.275, P=0.070); ( r=-0.087, P=0.582、 r=-0.065, P=0.664; r=-0.045, P=0.768). Conclusion:Inflammatory factors and disease activity indexes are highly expressed in rheumatoid arthritis patients with dry eye of disease, and there is a correlation between disease activity of rheumatoid arthritis and dry eye, which has some clinical meaing.