Retinal nerve fiber layer thinning found in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - Correlation with disease duration and severity.

Purpose: The retinal involvement of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a novel idea about a possible correlation between retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness in different spectra of ALS patients. Finding the association of RNFL with disease duration and severity will help identify a novel noninvasive biomarker. Methods: The study was designed as a cross-sectional study and was conducted with a suitable proforma. We included the ALS cases based on the revised El Escorial criteria. Healthy controls were age and gender matched. We used the revised ALS functional rating scale (ALSFRS-R) to assess the operational status of the patients. We measured RNFL thickness in the four quadrants with spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) and analyzed it. Results: We included 30 cases (60 eyes) and 10 healthy controls (20 eyes) having a mean (standard deviation [SD]) age of 49.5 (11.1) years with a median of 50 years, and a majority of them (65%) were middle aged (between 41 and 60 years). We found statistically significant differences in RNFL thicknesses between ALS patients and healthy controls. On segmental analysis, the right eye superior and nasal quadrants and the left eye superior, inferior, and nasal quadrants were significantly affected, along with a gross asymmetry found between the left and right eyes among ALS patients. There was a significant decrease in average RNFL thickness in definite ALS patients than probable ALS patients, with significantly reduced average RNFL thickness in moderate to severe ALS patients. On correlation analysis, disease duration showed a good negative correlation with bilateral average RNFL thickness, and the ALSFRS-R score demonstrated a good positive correlation with bilateral average RNFL thickness, which was statistically significant. Thus, a reduced bilateral RNFL thickness is associated with a decreased ALSFRS-R score. Conclusion: The retinal changes can serve as a marker for diagnosing and monitoring patients with ALS.

Thyroid functions and serum lipid profile in metabolic syndrome.

BACKGROUND: Thyroid hormones are known to affect energy metabolism. Many patients of metabolic syndrome have subclinical or clinical hypothyroidism and vice versa. To study the correlation of thyroid profile and serum lipid profile with metabolic syndrome. METHOD: It is a hospital based cross sectional case-control study carried out in tertiary care health center, we studied thyroid functions test and serum lipid profile in 100 metabolic syndrome patients according to IDF criteria and a similar number of age, gender and ethnicity matched healthy controls. RESULT: We found that serum HDL was significantly lower (p < 0.001) in cases (41.28 ± 8.81) as compared to controls (54.00 ± 6.31). It was also found that serum LDL, VLDL, triglyceride levels and total cholesterol were found to be significantly higher (p < 0.001) in cases than controls. Serum TSH levels of subjects in cases group (3.33 ± 0.78) were significantly higher (p < 0.001) than that of controls (2.30 ± 0.91) and significantly lower levels of T4 (p < 0.001) in the patients of metabolic syndrome (117.45) than in controls (134.64) while higher levels of T3, although statistically insignificant in the patients of metabolic syndrome. CONCLUSION: Thyroid hormones up-regulate metabolic pathways relevant to resting energy expenditure, hence, obesity and thyroid functions are often correlated.