Childhood Vaccine Protects Adult Eyes

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A new study points to another benefit of the childhood vaccination for the rubella virus. Researchers say the vaccine may have also nearly obliterated an inflammatory eye disease from the U.S. population.

Doctors don't know what causes fuchs heterochromic iridocyclitis (FHI), an untreatable chronic inflammatory eye disease that can lead to blindness. Now, researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago now have a better idea of what could prevent it.

Though the cause is unclear, researchers report earlier studies have found antibodies for rubella in the eyes of people who have FHI. Debra Goldstein, M.D., from the University of Illinois at Chicago, was quoted as saying, "We hypothesized that if there was a relationship between rubella and FHI, then the proportion of FHI cases we were seeing ... would decrease after the institution of the national rubella vaccination program and that an increasing percentage of the FHI cases would be in patients coming from countries without a vaccination program."

From 1985 to 2005, people who came to the hospital with FHI and two other types of eye disease were grouped together by decade of birth. The goal was to determine whether the percentage of people with FHI decreased relative to the other two eye diseases.

Results show the percentage of patients with FHI and the other two eye diseases were about equal between 1919 and 1958, which was the period before rubella vaccinations. Rubella vaccination was implemented in the United States in 1969. There was a 69-percent drop in FHI among U.S.-born patients who were born between 1959 and 1968 and an additional 40-percent decrease in patients who were born between 1969 and 1978. Researchers also found an increase in FHI cases among foreign-born patients during the same period.

Dr. Goldstein reports, "Although this kind of study has its limitations, it's exciting to find convincing epidemiological support for earlier research implicating the rubella virus as a cause of FHI."

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SOURCE: American Journal of Ophthalmology, 2007;144:424-428