Uveitis

Has anyone else out there been experiencing episodes of uveitis, iritis or eye inflammation. Apparently there are numerous causes, but autoimmune uveitis, if it turns out to be the cause, is treated in a far different way than other causes of uveitis.

David's first opthamologist appointment, five years post diabetes revealed uveitis in his left eye. It was aggressively treated and followed up using prednisone drops. He finally worked his way on to a 6 month follow up schedule when the opthamologist found uveitis in his right eye, so back to drops and a two week follow up schedule.

Has anyone else experienced this. Are you aware of specific ways to determine whether or not this sort of eye inflammation is caused by an autoimmune response and not some other cause?

Cheryl

I have meibomianitis…not sure if it’s related…it’s chronic (yea:?!)…& am gaming hard time controlling. been dealing with since Oct 09. Google Am Opthal Assn & type in Uveitis…good luck…I’m anxious to see if they are in the same family

Thank you for the reply Janny.

I looked up meibomianits and your condition seems to be more of an inflammation of the glands, so affecting the eyelid surrounding the eye whereas uveitis is an inflammation of a layer of the eyeball itself. The information that I have been able to gain from a google search is that many times the cause is unknown, while it can be caused by infection, exposure to toxins or autoimmune disorders. Strangely though they don’t list diabetes as one of the autoimmune disorders likely to cause uveitis. Top of the list though is rheumatoid arthritis which does run in my family and treatment if autoimmune is quite different than treatment from a non autoimmune cause.

So I really curious in hearing if there are other diabetics out there who are experiencing uveitis. It seems that laboratory tests can be done to rule out infection or autoimmune, so I think I might just contact the endo by email prior to the next clinic visit to see what she thinks.

Cheryl