Vitiligo in a Patient Treated with Interferon Alpha-2a for Behçet’s Disease

Behçet’s disease (BD) and vitiligo are diseases of unknown etiology. Interferon (IFN) alpha therapy is commonly used in Behçet uveitis. Interferon treatment in various diseases have also been observed causing certain autoimmune diseases such as vitiligo because of its immunomodulatory activity. The association between IFN therapy and vitiligo has been reported in the literature. We report a 21-year-old man with BD in whom vitiligo occurred during IFN treatment. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported case of such an association

Clinical characteristics of intermediate uveitis in adult Turkish patients

<b>AIM:</b>To describe the clinical characteristics of Turkish patients with intermediate uveitis (IU) and to investigate the effect of clinical findings and complications on final visual acuity (VA).<b>METHODS:</b>We retrospectively analyzed the medical records of patients with IU who had at least 6mo of follow-up and were older than 16y<i>.</i><b>RESULTS:</b>A total of 78 eyes of 45 patients were included in the study and the mean follow-up period was 19.4mo. The mean age at the time of presentation was 42.9s. Systemic disease associations were found in 17.7% of cases; sarcoidosis (8.8%) and multiple sclerosis (6.6%) were the most common diseases. Recurrence rate (odds ratio=45.53; 95%CI:2.181-950.58), vitritis equals to or more than 3+ cells (odds ratio =57.456; 95%CI:4.154-794.79) and presenting with VA less than 20/40 (odds ratio =43.81; 95%CI:2.184-878.71) were also found as high risk factors for poor final VA. At the last follow-up examination, 67.9% of eyes had VA of 20/40 or better.<b>CONCLUSION:</b> IU is frequently seen at the beginning of the fourth decade of life. The disease is most commonly idiopathic in adult Turkish patients. Patients with severe vitritis at presentation and patients with frequent recurrences are at high risk for poor visual outcome

Intravitreal bevacizumab for treatment of central serous chorioretinopathy

Purpose: To compare the outcomes of treatment with intravitreal bevacizumab (IVB) versus observation in central serous chorioretinopathy (CSCR). Methods: In a retrospective comparative study, records of 45 patients with CSCR were reviewed. Twenty-two patients received IVB (1.25 mg/0.05 ml) while 23 subjects were observed. All subjects underwent measurement of best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) and intraocular pressure (IOP), dilated fundus examination and optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging at baseline and follow up visits. Outcome measures included central macular thickness (CMT) and BCVA in logarithm of minimum angle of resolution (logMAR) notations. Results: Mean age was 44.1 ± 9.3 (range: 24 to 64) years and mean follow-up period was 10.4 ± 11.2 (range: 3 to 43; median: 6) months. All patients demonstrated resolution of neurosensory detachment and improvement in visual acuity. At final visit, there was no significant difference in mean CMT between the IVB and observation groups (275 vs 284 μm, P> 0.05). Mean baseline logMAR visual acuity was 0.38 ± 0.24 in the IVB group which improved to 0.24 ± 0.31 at final follow-up (P = 0.011); mean baseline logMAR visual acuity was 0.42 ± 0.28 in the observation group and improved to 0.12 ± 0.18 (P = 0.001). Visual improvement was more marked in the observation group (0.30 vs 0.14 logMAR, P< 0.05) and mean final visual acuity was also significantly better (P = 0.05). Conclusion: There was no significant difference between IVB injection and observation in terms of anatomical outcomes of treatment for CSCR. In terms of visual outcomes, observation was superior to IVB injection