Corneal Epithelial Dendritic Cells: An Objective Indicator for Ocular Surface Inflammation in Patients with Obstructive Meibomian Gland Dysfunction?

ABSTRACT

Purpose

To examine whether corneal epithelial dendritic cells (CEDC) could serve as an indicator to distinguish obstructive meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD) with or without ocular surface inflammation (OSI).

Methods

We performed a case-control study on patients with diagnosed obstructive MGD between August 2017 and November 2019.

Results

30 MGD cases and 25 healthy controls were recruited. The classification of MGD patients with and without OSI was based on the tear pro-inflammatory cytokine levels. Compared with the MGD without OSI and the control group, a higher CEDC density was detected in the MGD with OSI subgroup. The presence of >15.6 cells/mm² CEDC had a sensitivity of 73% and specificity of 75% for the diagnosis of MGD with OSI.

Conclusions

OSI is not present in all patients with obstructive MGD. Evaluation of CEDC density in the central cornea may help identify whether MGD is concomitant with OSI.

KEYWORDS:

• Corneal epithelial dendritic cell
• in vivo confocal microscopy
• meibomian gland dysfunction
• ocular surface inflammation
• pro-inflammatory cytokine

Acknowledgments

We thank the patients for their permission to publish their information.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Data availability statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1080/09273948.2022.2155843), further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09273948.2022.2155843

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [number 81970765].