Risk factors for ocular surface disorders in patients with type 2 diabetes

The tear film consists of a set of heterogeneous substances (lipids, proteins, mucin and water) combined in order to form ahighly organic tropism structure specialized in the defense of the ocular surface.We studied 45 patients affected by type 2 diabetes (27 F-18 M mean age 68 + / - 5 years) with signs of distress and/or dry eyes(burning, foreign body sensation, dryness and itching). Patients were treated with lipoic acid for 28 days. Subjective symptoms andobjective signs were seen in the first visit and 5 days after the end of therapy. We considered the results of different tests, such asSchirmer I, Schirmer II, breakage of the film tears (BUT) and conjunctiva swab for the detection of aerobic and anaerobic bacteria.For each tests we evaluated mean and standard deviation and we confronted the data obtained before and after treatment witha tear substitute next-generation alpha-lipoic acid, obtaining significantly statistical results in each confront.The total number of bacteria isolations occurred before and after treatment showed a reduction of aerobic (from 25 to 19) andanaerobic strains (from 15 to 10).These results show that alpha-lipoic acid has a good regulatory activity and its clinical efficacy is confirmed by an activityaimed to normalize clinical parameters of tears.