Rheumatoid arthritis is a systemic chronic inflammatory disease of which the aetiology is not fully known and that affects joints dominantly.
There is a well-known association of several systemic diseases with dry eye syndrome such as Sjögren’s syndrome , rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma, polymyositis, lymphoma, amyloidosis, hemochromatosis, sarcoidosis, and systemic lupus erythematosus.
The purpose of this study is to define the prevalence and association of dry eye in a group of Egyptian patients with active rheumatoid arthritis.
The study was performed on 100 patients with active rheumatoid arthritis attending to the outpatient clinic of Rheumatology and rehabilitation at Sohag university hospital in the period from February 2013 to December 2013. Dry eye was diagnosed at the ophthalmology outpatient clinic of Sohag university hospital on the basis of three tests: Schirmer test with anaesthesia, tear break-up time (BUT) and Rose bengal staining.
The number of patients with definite dry eye (all three test are positive) were 27, the number of patients with probable dry eye (only one or two tests were positive) were 14 while the number of patients without dry eye (none of the tests was positive) were 59.
The prevalence of dry eye in patients with active rheumatoid arthritis was found to be 27% and we did not find any correlation between the prevalence of dry eye and the severity of rheumatoid arthritis activity.
Our results imply that the deterioration of the systemic condition of RA does not necessarily lead to the aggravation of dry eye symptoms. Conversely, dry eye cannot be excluded, even in patients with only mild RA. Therefore, dry eye always should be taken into consideration—regardless of the RA activity— because dry eye patients often lack the signs and symptoms of dry eye.