Purpose: To investigate the changes in plasma concentrations of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), insulin growth factor (IGF-1), erythropoietin, pigment epithelium–derived factor, and IgG1 after bevacizumab intravitreal injection in infants with retinopathy of prematurity. Methods: Eleven eyes from six infants who received intravitreal injection of bevacizumab were enrolled in this study. At preinjection and postinjection 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 weeks, 0.5 mL of blood was collected from each infant. The plasma concentrations of VEGF, insulin growth factor, erythropoietin, pigment epithelium–derived factor, and IgG1 were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Five patients received simultaneous bilateral bevacizumab injection; one patient received unilateral injection. Results: Of the infants who received intravitreal bevacizumab injection, two were males and four were females. The mean gestational age was 26 ± 2 weeks. The mean birth weight was 870 g. The mean plasma VEGF concentration before bevacizumab injection was 2.05 ± 3.00 ng/mL; plasma level decreased significantly to 0.16 ± 0.10 ng/mL and to 0.14 ± 0.14 ng/mL (P = 0.028) after 1 week and 2 weeks, respectively. Moreover, the plasma concentrations of VEGF did not return to the original level in any of the samples until 8 weeks after the injection. However, mean plasma IgG1, erythropoietin, insulin growth factor, and PEDF concentrations did not change significantly during the interval between preinjection and any other follow-up time points. Conclusion: Intravitreal bevacizumab injections significantly reduce plasma VEGF concentration in infants with retinopathy of prematurity over a 7-week period.

Purpose: This study aims to provide an automatic strabismus screening method for people who live in remote areas with poor medical accessibility. Materials and methods: The proposed method first utilizes a pretrained convolutional neural network-based face-detection model and a detector for 68 facial landmarks to extract the eye region for a frontal facial image. Second, Otsu’s binarization and the HSV color model are applied to the image to eliminate the influence of eyelashes and canthi. Then, the method samples all of the pixel points on the limbus and applies the least square method to obtain the coordinate of the pupil center. Lastly, we calculated the distances from the pupil center to the medial and lateral canthus to measure the deviation of the positional similarity of two eyes for strabismus screening. Result: We used a total of 60 frontal facial images (30 strabismus images, 30 normal images) to validate the proposed method. The average value of the iris positional similarity of normal images was smaller than one of the strabismus images via the method (p-value<0.001). The sample mean and sample standard deviation of the positional similarity of the normal and strabismus images were 1.073 ± 0.014 and 0.039, as well as 1.924 ± 0.169 and 0.472, respectively. Conclusion: The experimental results of 60 images show that the proposed method is a promising automatic strabismus screening method for people living in remote areas with poor medical accessibility.

To investigate clinical features of infectious endophthalmitis over five years in a South Korean population. Medical records of consecutive patients diagnosed with infectious endophthalmitis at eight institutions located in Gyeongsangnam-do and Pusan city between January 1, 2004 and July 31, 2010 were reviewed. A total of 197 patients were diagnosed and treated. An average of 30.0 infectious endophthalmitis per year was developed. The annual incidence rate of postoperative endophthalmitis during 2006 ~ 2009 was 0.037%. The ratios of male to female and right to left were 50.2%: 49.8 % and 54.8%: 43.2%, respectively. Eighth decade and spring were the peak age (36.6%) and season (32.0%) to develop the infectious endophthalmitis. The most common past history in systemic disease was hypertension (40.4%), followed by diabetes (23.4%). Cataract operation (60.4%) was the most common cause, among which most of them was uneventful phacoemulsification (95.9%). Corneal laceration (51.6%) and liver abscess (42.9%) were the most common causes of traumatic and endogenous endophthalmitis, respectively. The percentages of patients with initial and final visual acuity less than counting fingers were 62.6% and 35.2%, respectively. Treatment with vitrectomy with or without intravitreal antibiotics injection was administered to 72.6% of patients, while 17.3% received intravitreal antibiotics only. Our study revealed that the development of infectious endophthalmitis was related with seasonal variation and increased during our study period. Pars plana vitrectomy was preferred for the treatment of infectious endophthalmitis in South Korea.

Background: Staphylococcus epidermidisis the most common pathogen in postoperative endophthalmitis and causes various infectious eye diseases. However, there is very little information on fluoroquinolone antibiotic resistance toS. epidermidisidentified in conjunctival microbe and analysis of related genes. Here, the authors investigated the rate of resistance to fluoroquinolones ofStaphylococcus epidermidisisolated from normal conjunctival microbes and mutations in the quinolone-resistance determining region (QRDR).Methods: 377 eye samples from 187 patients who underwent intravitreal injection and cataract surgery were included. Specimens were taken from the bilateral lower conjunctival sacs using a cotton swab and cultured. The cultures were identified using MALDI-TOP MS andgyrA, gyrB, parC, andparEgene mutations of QRDR were confirmed by DNA extraction from resistant strains ofS. epidermidiswith a micro-dilution method using ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, and moxifloxacin.Results: The culture positive rate was 61.8% (231) for 374 eye samples. Of the 303 total strains cultured,S. epidermidiswas the most common with 33.7% (102). Ten types of gene mutations were observed in the resistantS. epidermidisof 21 strains. One-point mutation was observed mainly ingyrAandparC, and a small number of mutations were observed inparEin the form of a double point mutations. When there were multiple point mutations in bothgyrAandparC, the highest minimum inhibitory concentration was observed.Conclusions: The quinolone resistance rate ofS. epidermidisincreased in comparison with previous studies, and resistantS. epidermidisshowed mostly QRDR mutations, which were mainly found ingyrAandparC, and showed strong resistance when mutated in both genes.

Corneal chemical burns can lead to blindness following serious complications. As most of these complications are caused by failure of reepithelization during the acute phase, treatment at this stage is critical. Although there have been some studies on corneal injury recovery using adipose tissue-derived stem cells (ADSCs), none has reported the effect of topical cell-free conditioned culture media (CM) derived from ADSCs on corneal epithelial regeneration. Here, the best conditions for CM were selected and used for in vitro and in vivo experiments. Corneal burn in rats was induced using 100% alcohol. The chosen CM was administered to corneal burn rats (CM-treated [CT] group) four times a day for three days and this group was compared with the normal control and corneal burn (CB) groups. Biomicroscopic fluorescence images and the actual physical corneas were taken over time and used for analysis. mRNA levels of hepatocyte growth factor and epidermal growth factor (EGF) were significantly increased, whereas those of vascular endothelial growth factor, interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6, IL-10, and matrix metalloproteinase-9 were significantly decreased in the CT group compared with those in the CB group. The numbers of proliferating cell nuclear antigen- and zonular occludens-1-positive cells in the CT group were significantly higher than those in the CB group. The macrophage-infiltrating corneas in the CT group expressed significantly more of the M2 marker arginase than corneas in the CB group. Optimal CM (× 0.5 concentration) treatment significantly accelerated the migration of corneal epithelial cells and induced upregulation of the expression of IL-6, EGF, and C-X-C chemokine receptor type 4 mRNAs. Overall, in this study, topical administration of cell-free CM promoted regeneration of the corneal epithelium after induction of chemical burns.