Eye injections and dry eye

Agni Malmin and colleagues published a study in the May 2023 edition of the journal Ophthalmology that was quite eye opening (if you’ll pardon the pun).

They found that patients who had multiple injections in the eyeball had a REDUCED amount of the sorts of pathology associated with dry eye: they had less oil gland loss, a higher tear volume, and less surface inflammation. Conventionally, we think of more intervention with the eye to be associated with worse dry eye rather than less dry eye, i.e. more “monkeying” with the eye leads to a more dysfunctional tear film. However, Dr. Malmin’s report suggests the opposite in the case of injections.

It is good to keep in mind that this is only one study, but the findings are very intriguing.