Grus F. H., Sabuncuo P., Augustin A. J., Pfeiffer N.

Dept of Ophthalmology, University of Mainz, Germany

Purpose: Cigarette smoking is a mean risc factor for many diseases, e.g. cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases. Among those several eye diseases such as macula degeneration, glaucoma and cataract can be associated with smoking. Ischemic, toxic, and oxidative effects of cigarettes are thought to play an important role in damaging the ocular tissue. Furthermore, smoking can cause symptoms of dry eye disease. The aim of this study was to analyze and compare the electrophoretic patterns of tears of smokers (SP), severs smokers (SSP), and from non-smokers (CTRL).
Methods: Three hundred twenty two eyes were examined in this study (SP: n=29; SSP: n=26; CTRL: n=267). Each patient was asked for subjective symptoms like burning, itching, foreign body sensation. The tear proteins were separated by SDS-PAGE. Digital image analysis was performed by ScanPacK (Biometra, Göttingen, Germany) creating densitometric data files for each electrophoretic lane. The data was analysed by multivariate statistical techniques.
Results: The tear protein patterns in SP (P<0.05) and SSP (P<0.05) were different from those of CTRL. There were significantly more protein peaks in the SSP group (P<0.005) than in CTRL. The subjective symptoms of SSP were statistically significantly different from CTRL (P<0.01).
Conclusion: The electrophoretic analysis of tear protein patterns could detect changes in the tear proteins of smokers in comparison to nonsmokers. These changes are furthermore correlated with an increase of dry eye related subjective symptoms in smokers. Thus, the electrophoretic analysis of tear proteins could give more insight in the pathogenesis of smoking induced ocular surface diseases.

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