Safety and efficacy of autologous serum eye drop for treatment of dry eyes in graft-versus-host disease

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the treatment of autologous serum eye drops (ASED) on dry eyes in patients with graft-versus-host disease (GVHD).

Methods: A retrospective chart review of 35 patients with a history of ocular GVHD following hematopoietic stem cell transplantation that used ASED to alleviate dry eye symptoms was performed. Patients were categorized into three different groups. If patients had available ophthalmic data before and after starting treatment was group 1 (n = 14), had available ophthalmic data after starting treatment in group 2 (n = 10) and had available ophthalmic data before treatment or did not have any data after starting treatment in group 3 (n = 11). Data were collected on patient’s age, gender, primary diagnosis, visual acuity and fluorescein corneal staining were collected on individual eyes in order to evaluate the efficacy of the ASED on alleviating dry eye-related signs and symptoms.

Results: No adverse ocular effect from the ASED was found in our series (except one fungal keratitis). All patients reported either improvement (55%) or stability (45%) in their ocular symptoms upon the use of ASED. In patients with available data before and after starting treatment, the corneal staining score improved by a median of 1 (p = 0.003) and the LogMAR visual acuity had a non-significant improvement.

Conclusion: In our study, ASED used by patients with ocular GVHD were both safe and effective. ASED should be considered in patients with GVHD who suffer from dry eyes.

Keywords:

• Autologous serum eye drops
• cornea
• dry eye
• graft-versus-host disease

Acknowledgements

We thank Wayne R. Borcherding, Ronald J. Oilschlager and Michelle L. Lindaas for production of autologous serum eye drops at the Clinical Hematopoietic Cell Processing Laboratory of the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics.

Declaration of interest

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health grant P30-EY016665 (Core Grant for Vision Research) and an unrestricted department award from the Research to Prevent Blindness. This work was also supported by grant P30 CA014520. The authors have no financial interest in any of the products mentioned in the manuscript. None of the authors has any conflicts of interest in this study.