What is Uveitis?
Uveitis is inflammation of the uvea — the part of the eye that consists of the iris, ciliary body, and choroid.
Uveitis is classified by the location of the inflammation of the uvea.
Anterior Uveitis refers to inflammation of the iris alone or the iris and ciliary body (iritis).
Intermediate Uveitis refers to inflammation of the ciliary body.
Posterior Uveitis is inflammation of the choroid.
Panuveitis is inflammation in all areas of the uvea.
There are approximately 280,000 new cases of uveitis in the U.S. each year. Twenty to fifty year olds are most frequently affected. This leads to about 30,000 cases of blindness each year (10% of blindness). Anterior uveitis is the most common type and most cases are chronic in nature. Men and women tend to be affected equally.
Symptoms of Uveitis
Anterior Uveitis causes light sensitivity, decreased vision, redness, and eye pain.
Intermediate and Posterior Uveitis usually are painless. Patient can develop blurred vision and floaters.
Panuveitis has a combination of symptoms of all types of uveitis.
Treatment of Uveitis
The classic treatment for uveitis is steroids. Steroids come in multiple forms including drops, pills, injections, and intraocular inserts. The type needed depends on the type of uveitis present. Treatment of other underlying disorders is also required.
Steroids can have serious side effects, such as kidney damage, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, osteoporosis and glaucoma. Therefore, your ophthalmologist may need to monitor and treat your disease in conjunction with other sub-specialists.
In some cases, steroid-sparing immunosuppresants may be required to completely control the disease.
Causes of Uveitis
Uveitis has multiple causes, including bacterial, viral, and fungal infections. In many cases the cause is unable to be indentified or unknown (idiopathic).
Some cases will develop as a consequence of trauma, infection, or immune system disorders.
Systemic disorders associated with uveitis include:
- acute posterior multifocal placoid pigment epitheliopathy
- ankylosing spondylitis
- Behçet's disease
- birdshot retinochoroidopathy
- brucellosis
- cat scratch disease
- Chron's disease
- CMV
- herpes simplex
- herpes zoster
- histoplasmosis
- HIV
- inury/trauma
- juvenile rheumatoid arthritis
- Kawasaki's disease
- leptospirosis
- Lyme disease
- lymphoma
- multiple sclerosis
- presumed ocular histoplasmosis syndrome
- psoriatic arthritis
- Reiter's syndrome
- sarcoidosis
- syphilis
- systemic lupus erythematosus
- toxocariasis
- toxoplasmosis
- tuberculosis
- ulcerative colitis
- Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada syndrome
- West Nile virus