RALEIGH, N.C. – Wearing glasses was associated with a significantly lower rate of developing actinic keratoses on periocular skin, according to the results of a large multicenter clinical trial.
During an average 4-year prospective follow-up conducted at 6-month intervals in the Veterans Affairs Topical Tretinoin Chemoprevention Trial, the 1,131 elderly participants, most of whom were male, developed 3,291 periocular actinic keratoses.
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Eyeglasses can reduce the flux of UV radiation filtered to the periocular area.
Patients who didn’t regularly wear eyeglasses had a 40% higher rate of developing AKs on periocular skin. This is consistent with reports in the ophthalmologic literature that eyeglasses can reduce the flux of UV radiation filtered to the periocular area, according to Dr. Kachiu C. Lee, a dermatology resident at Brown University in Providence, R.I.
Her hypothesis was that eyeglasses wearers would also have a lower rate of periocular nonmelanoma skin cancer. However, this wasn’t borne out, possibly because too few of the malignancies occurred to be able to demonstrate a protective effect, she noted. Although all suspected skin cancers were biopsied for histologic diagnosis, only 19 periocular squamous cell carcinomas and 71 periocular basal cell carcinomas occurred during follow-up.
A significant study limitation was that patients weren’t surveyed as to their use of sunglasses. "That’s a huge potential confounding variable," Dr. Lee said.
The study was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Dr. Lee reported having no financial conflicts.