A Review on Evidence-Based Treatments for Meibomian Gland Dysfunction.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate recent studies on available therapies for meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD). METHODS: A literature search on recent publications, within the last five years, concerning treatment options for MGD was performed. RESULTS: A total of 35 articles were reviewed after curation by the authors for relevance. In general, all modalities of treatments were shown to have clinical efficacy in alleviating dry eye signs and symptoms, although the extent of improvement and persistency of outcomes varied between the different treatments. Evidence from published studies demonstrate that thermal pulsation produces the longest lasting effect per treatment, but it also incurs the highest per-treatment cost. Reusable methods for warm compress with lipid/semi-fluorinated alkane-containing eye drops are recommended as first-line treatment for mild-to-moderate dry eye patients, because this option is most technically feasible and cost-effective in clinical practice. Intense pulsed light (IPL) therapy and thermal pulsation may be suitable as second line for patients unresponsive to warm compress therapy; however, their respective limitations need to be considered. For refractory MGD with features of periductal fibrosis or severe blepharitis, supplementary treatment with meibomian gland probing or oral antibiotics may be used. CONCLUSIONS: All eight forms of treatments, including self-applied eyelid warming, thermal pulsation, IPL, MG probing, antibiotics, lipid-containing eye drops, and perfluorohexyloctane, were effective against MGD, although with varying extent of clinical improvements. A better understanding on the mechanisms of actions may guide physicians to make better treatment decisions targeting the root causes.

Role of tear film biomarkers in the diagnosis and management of dry eye disease.

In recent years, there has been increasing scientific interest in the use of tear film biomarkers in the diagnosis and management of dry eye disease (DED), owing to their potential important roles in the pathogenesis of ocular surface damage, as well as the technical feasibility of tear sample collection techniques. An Entrez PubMed search was conducted on March 2, 2019, to include papers investigating the use of tear film biomarkers in DED, and the results were classified according to whether the DED is associated with systemic inflammatory disease or not and further classified within each section according to the molecular nature of the biomarker for further discussion. A total of 58 relevant articles were reviewed. Certain cytokines, including interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor-alpha, IL-17, and IL-8, were found by a number of studies to consistently reflect disease severity well and had strong correlations with tear film metrics and tests for ocular surface damage in dry eye without systemic inflammatory disease. For dry eye with systemic inflammatory disease, IL-17, IL-8, and IL-1 receptor antagonists were shown to be consistently higher in affected eyes and correlated well with ocular surface disease severity in more than one type of inflammatory disease. With the advancement in technology and lowered costs in the future, tear film biomarker counts would allow better diagnosis and monitoring of DED, as well as facilitate personalized treatment strategies.