Hitit Medical Journal (Oct 2019)

Choroidal Thickness in Patients Using Hydroxychloroquine Without Retinal Toxicity

  • Gökhan Özge,
  • Ali Durukan,
  • Fm Mutlu,
  • Hayati Yılmaz,
  • Murat Küçükevcilioğlu,
  • Dorukcan Akıncıoğlu

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2, no. 3
pp. 73 – 78

Abstract

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Objective: Hydroxychloroquine is a well-known antirheumatic drug that may cause irreversible retinal damage if not detected earlier. However, to date, there has been no study investigating the effects of hydroxychloroquine on the choroid. In this study, we evaluated the submacular choroidal thickness in patients using hydroxychloroquine without retinal toxicity in comparison to healthy controls. Material and Method: Thirty patients using hydroxychloroquine, and thirty-nine healthy controls were included in this study. Only the right eyes of the patients and the control subjects were used in the analysis. The demographic features of the patients and control subjects were recorded. Each subject underwent ophthalmological examinations including refraction, visual acuity, intraocular pressure, 10/2 visual field testing, slit-lamp biomicroscopy, and fundus examination. As the last step submacular choroid was imaged by enhanced depth imaging optical coherence tomography (EDI-OCT), and measured manually at five regions (subfoveal, nasal 500, nasal 1500, temporal 500 and temporal 1500). Results: There were no significant differences between patients and controls regarding age, gender, intraocular pressure, best-corrected visual acuity (p gt;0,05). Choroidal thickness values at all regions were statistically higher in patients than controls (subfoveal; p lt; 0.05, nasal 500; p lt; 0.01, nasal 1500; p lt; 0.01, temporal 500; p lt; 0.01,temporal 1500; p lt; 0.01). The mean of the subfoveal choroidal thickness is 319.2 ± 79.4 in patients and 270.3 ± 102.4 in controls. It is 314.3 ± 84.7 vs 253.7 ± 94.8 for nasal 500, 288 ± 90.1 vs 219.8 ± 84.4 for nasal 1500, 313.9 ± 76.1 vs 254.4 ± 90.9 for temporal 500 and 288.6 ± 61.3 vs 240.9 ± 90.7 for temporal 1500. Conclusion: Thickening in submacular choroid could be due to the accumulation of these drugs in the choroidal melanocytes and reactions from the surrounding tissues.

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