Abstract

Currently it is difficult to identify patients not responding to antifungal therapy so we need to know functional and molecular aspects of the disease.Through this study we understood the importance of pathogen mediated host stress response in fungal keratitis.Aim To develop a method to predict the treatment outcome in keratitis patients using the clinical features and the tear proteome profile.The tear proteins were found to be containing specific biomarkers which were upregulated in an inflamed eye especially nonresponders. Method 136 tear samples of fungal positive patients were collected along with ulcer documentation. Absolute quantification of 6 specific tear proteins was done using commercially available kits. Result The dysregulation of 6 tear markers was studied and were found good predictors of treatment outcome. The ulcer features along with tear biomarkers increase the sensitivity and specificity of predicting treatment outcome to 92.3% as compared to individual analysis

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