Association Between Dry Eye Disease and Newly Diagnosed Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Abstract

Purpose: 

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the association between dry eye disease and patients with newly diagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Methods: 

Thirty treatment-naive patients with OCD and 30 healthy controls were included in this prospective study. The Ocular Surface Disease Index, tear breakup time, Schirmer I test, corneal and conjunctival staining grade (Oxford scale), and neutrophil-to-leucocyte ratio values were obtained for all participants.

Results: 

The comparison of the patients with OCD and healthy controls showed significantly higher values in Ocular Surface Disease Index (34.8 vs. 20.8, P = 0.001), corneal Oxford scoring (0.9 vs. 0.6, P = 0.02), and conjunctival Oxford scoring (0.8 vs. 0.5, P = 0.04), with consistently lower values in the Schirmer I test (15.7 vs. 18.8, P = 0.043) and tear breakup time (9.1 vs. 12.9, P = 0.001). The mean neutrophil-to-leucocyte ratio values were significantly higher in the OCD group compared with the controls (2.4 ± 0.9 vs. 1.6 ± 0.4, respectively; P = 0.001).

Conclusions: 

Our study showed a relation between dry eye disease and patients with newly diagnosed OCD who were not using any psychiatric drug. Our findings suggest that inflammation, which plays an important role in the pathogenesis of both diseases, may be responsible for this relationship.