Eyeworld

EW NEWS & OPINION 30 April 2016 ocular irritation and others—sug- gests that when we get into environ- ments where global climate change can induce more ocular irritants in the environment or can lead to very low-humidity conditions or more desertification scenarios, we would see worsening of dry eye in those susceptible. A reasonable assertion would be, yes, that is possible." Dr. West added that future re- search could model this, if the data is available, to determine how much humidity affects dry eye. "I think we need the link that says we can do that kind of model- ing because we have a degree of cer- tainty that the conditions that result from climate change are strongly associated with or even causal for conditions like dry eye, and we're not there yet," she said. Dr. Luchs said changes in sea- sonality due to climate change could affect allergies as well. "Seasonal allergy patients might act more like perennial allergy patients … if pollen is in the air for longer periods of time," he said. While Dr. Luchs said some countermeasures to protect ocular health are already in place, he thinks more could and should be done in terms of education and developing proactive eye protection technolo- gies and devices. "At the very least, attention must be given to eye protection and to environmental insults," he said. "If this is where the models are go- ing, we need to think about things we can do now to mitigate these effects going forward." "I don't know what needs to be done to undo or slow the effects of climate change," he added later. "Hopefully the world will do what needs to be done to slow progres- sion. In the event we don't though, we need to be prepared as a medical community in general." EW Reference McMichael AJ, et al. Climate change and human health: risks and responses. 2003. World Health Organization. www.who.int/ globalchange/publications/climchange.pdf Editors' note: The sources have no financial interests related to their comments. Contact information Luchs: jluchs@aol.com West: shwest@jhmi.edu what they basically call desiccating syndrome," Dr. West said in an NEI video. "I think it's reasonable to expect that under conditions where there is increasing lack of moisture, the dry areas are spreading and that symptomatology with dry eye disease will get worse. I don't think there is any data to suggest we're going to see an absolute increase in numbers, but I think the symptoms will be worse and [there will be a] need for people to seek relief for their dry eye as that spreads." Dr. West reiterated to EyeWorld that she doesn't think low humidity would cause more cases of dry eye but it could drive ocular irritants that affect dry eye symptomatology. "The fact that others have noted in research that those kinds of scenarios can worsen symptoms— Dr. West said based on what climate change models are predict- ing, dry eye symptoms could also be exacerbated. "I think there's fairly good agreement that scientists would say we are expanding our areas of low humidity and increased temperature and what that does to the surface of the eye, particularly for people who have evaporative dry eye disease or What continued from page 29

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