Clinical Ophthalmology (Dec 2022)

Finger-Prick Autologous Blood (FAB) Eye Drops for Dry Eye Disease: Single Masked Multi-Centre Randomised Controlled Trial

  • Hassan A,
  • Balal S,
  • Cook E,
  • Dehbi HM,
  • Pardhan S,
  • Bourne R,
  • Ahmad S,
  • Sharma A

Journal volume & issue
Vol. Volume 16
pp. 3973 – 3979

Abstract

Read online

Ali Hassan,1,2,* Shafi Balal,1,2,* Erica Cook,3 Hakim-Moulay Dehbi,4 Shahina Pardhan,5 Rupert Bourne,6 Sajjad Ahmad,1,2 Anant Sharma1,2 1Department of External Eye Diseases, Moorfields Eye Hospital, London, UK; 2Department of Ophthalmology, UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, London, UK; 3Department of Healthcare, University of Bedfordshire, Luton, UK; 4Trials department, Comprehensive Clinical Trials Unit, London, UK; 5Department of Eye Research, Vision and Eye Research Institute (VERI) Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK; 6Department of Ophthalmology, Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge, UK*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Shafi Balal, Moorfields Eye Hospital, 162 City Road, London, United Kingdom, Email [email protected]: To investigate the quantitative and qualitative efficacy of finger-prick autologous blood (FAB) eye drops versus conventional medical therapy for the treatment of severe dry eye disease (DED).Methods: Two centre, single masked, randomised controlled trial. Sixty patients in total were recruited with thirty patients (sixty eyes) treated with FAB eye drops four times per day in addition to their conventional DED treatment, and thirty patients (fifty-eight eyes) served as control subjects on conventional treatment alone. Ocular surface disease index (OSDI), Schirmer’s test, fluorescein ocular staining grade (OCSG) Oxford schema and fluorescein tear film break-up time (TBUT), were performed at baseline, at 4 and 8 weeks.Results: OSDI scores significantly decreased in the FAB arm by greater than − 17.68 (− 37.67 to − 2.96, p=0.02) compared to the control arm. There were greater improvements in OCSG and TBUT in the FAB arm but these were non-significant (p> 0.05).Conclusion: This feasibility study demonstrates adding FAB eye drops to conventional medical therapy for DED improves mean OSDI symptom score compared to conventional medical therapy alone. It may have particular use in settings where serum is unobtainable. An adequately powered and well-designed randomised trial is needed to further evaluate the long-term clinical benefit of FAB.Keywords: finger-prick, dry eye, serum, autologous

Keywords