Contact lens microbial keratitis and prior topical steroid use: a disaster in the making?
Patients with prior topical combined antibiotics-steroids present slightly later and with larger ulcers. However, the duration of stay, final visual acuity, treatment failure and complication rates were not statistically different from the non-treated group. This might be due to 1) early presentation and therefore early treatment of contact lens-related microbial keratitis and 2) the short duration of use of combined antibiotic-steroid eye drops.
The ability to activate endothelial cells detected in our patient sera was caused by cytokines and not antibody. Our observation that addition of cytokines to sera before separation into large and low molecular weight fractions demonstrated retention of cytokines in both fractions may be a confounding issue when investigating endothelial cell activation by patients' sera.