Patient perspective improves dry eye syndrome research

WASHINGTON – Over one-third of 28 outcomes identified to be important to Sjogren’s patients with dry eye are not commonly found in existing research, according to a study presented at the International Symposium on Sjogren’s Syndrome.

With dry eye found in over 85% of Sjogren’s patients, pinpointing important outcomes accurately can help researchers and physicians focus their efforts and be more cost effective when developing clinical trials, systematic reviews , practice guidelines, and evidence-based health care, according to presenter Ian J. Saldanha, MBBS, MPH, PhD, of the department of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore.

“When designing clinical trials, if you are trying to incorporate the views of patients, this can help more accurately depict what you should be measuring and in what time frame,“ Dr. Saldanha said to attendees. This can be important as agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration have absolved to be more committed to bringing the patient perspective to drug development, according to Dr. Saldanha.

Investigators surveyed 420 subscribers to KeratoScoop, a news source that specifically reports on dry eye, using a two-round survey process with participants ranking outcomes from 0 to 10, 0 being the least important and 10 being the most.

The majority of the patients were white American women, aged 50 years and older.

To start, Dr. Saldanha and his fellow investigators identified 109 outcomes commonly found in existing research. Of these, 28 were identified as important to survey takers.

The investigators noted that 39% of the outcomes identified were symptoms, compared with 25% for clinical testing, 14% related to quality of life, and the remainder split evenly between lab measures, safety, and others.