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Corneal stress‒strain index in relation to retinal nerve fibre layer thickness among healthy young adults

Eye volume 38, pages 1654–1659 (2024)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background/Objectives

To determine the relationship between corneal stress-strain index (SSI) and retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) thickness.

Subjects/Methods

1645 healthy university students from a university-based study contributed to the analysis. The RNFL thickness was measured by high-definition optical coherence tomography (HD-OCT), axial length (AL) was measured by IOL Master, and corneal biomechanics including SSI, biomechanical corrected intraocular pressure (bIOP), and central corneal thickness (CCT) were measured by Corvis ST. Multivariate linear regression was performed to evaluate the relationship between the SSI and RNFL thickness after adjusting for potential covariates.

Results

The mean age of the participants was 19.0\(\pm \)0.9 years, and 1132 (68.8%) were women. Lower SSI was significantly associated with thinner RNFL thickness (\(\beta \)=8.601, 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.999–14.203, \(P\) = 0.003) after adjusting for age, CCT, bIOP, and AL. No significant association between SSI and RNFL was found in men, while the association was significant in women in the fully adjusted model. The association was significant in the nonhigh myopic group (\(P\) for trend = 0.021) but not in the highly myopic group. Eyes with greater bIOP and lower SSI had significantly thinner RNFL thickness.

Conclusions

Eyes with lower SSI had thinner RNFL thickness after adjusting for potential covariates, especially those with higher bIOP. Our findings add novel evidence of the relationship between corneal biomechanics and retinal ganglion cell damage.

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Fig. 1: The distribution of SSI.
Fig. 2: The β coefficient of multivariate linear regression for the association between SSI and RNFL thickness.
Fig. 3: Three-dimensional bar charts showing the mean RNFL thickness stratified according to bIOP and SSI.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request.

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Funding

Funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 82122059 and No. 82160204) and Nankai University Eye Institute (NKYKD202206).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Health, Suzhou Medical College of Soochow University, Suzhou, China

    Min-Xin Liu, Dan-Lin Li & Chen-Wei Pan

  2. Department of Ophthalmology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Dali University, Dali, China

    Zhi-Jian Yin

  3. Department of Ophthalmology, the Affiliated Hospital of Yunnan University, Kunming, China

    Yue-Zu Li, Ya-Jie Zheng, Yu Qin, Rong Ma & Gang Liang

  4. Department of Ophthalmology, the Second People’s Hospital of Yunnan Province, Kunming, China

    Yue-Zu Li, Ya-Jie Zheng, Yu Qin, Rong Ma & Gang Liang

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Contributions

Study conception and design: CWP, GL. Data collection: MXL, DLL, ZJY, YZL, YJZ, YQ, RM. Data analysis and interpretation: MXL, DLL, YZL; Paper writing: MXL, CWP. Final approval of paper: all authors.

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Correspondence to Gang Liang or Chen-Wei Pan.

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Liu, MX., Li, DL., Yin, ZJ. et al. Corneal stress‒strain index in relation to retinal nerve fibre layer thickness among healthy young adults. Eye 38, 1654–1659 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41433-024-02985-7

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