Treating dry eyes and corneal ulcers with fingerprick autologous blood
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Treating dry eyes and corneal ulcers with fingerprick autologous blood
IRAS ID
125251
Contact name
Anant Sharma
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Bedford Hospital
Research summary
Dry eye syndrome refers to a common group of ocular surface disorders with varying disease severity due to lack of sufficient tears or sufficient quality of tears. Chronic corneal ulcers are a severe debilitating corneal disorder often due to infection but also can occur due to healed infections, damaged nerves from infection or post surgery ). Autologous serum eye drops have been found in uncontrolled trials to be beneficial for patients with severe dry eyes, improving the ocular surface and reducing symptoms. Serum derives from plasma that is the liquid component of blood after removal of clotting factors. Obtaining autologous serum drops requires several venesections. Patients with severe dry eyes or chronic ulcers can be too unwell for venesections. Moreover, this is a time and resources consuming procedure for the NHS, also requiring a fridge and storage facilities by the patient as the serum is aliquoted into hundreds of bottles and there is also a risk of bacterial contamination. Practically there is no available immediate or longterm funding available for such patients and in the interim patients have had to have procedures such as suturing of the eyelids, injectons to cause eyelid drooping. Some patients with chronic ulcers have waited so long as to cause perforation and corneal surgery.\n\nAs well as serum therapy, platelet therapy and white blood cells alone has also been suceesfully trialled for the treatment of corneal ulcers. We propose using the patient’s own blood, obtained from a finger prick using standard diabetic lancet. This blood is fresh, therefore more effective, and contains all the separate factors such as serum, platelets and white blood cells to treat chronic dry eyes and corneal ulcers, using a simple fingerprick method and direct transfer to the cornea.\n\nHealing of ulcers and standard routine dry eye markers will be measured.
REC name
East of England - Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/EE/0032
Date of REC Opinion
12 Feb 2014
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion