Anna Brouwer

ERG abnormalities in non-anterior childhood uveitis (BCVA), cell grade in the anterior chamber, cell grade in the vitreous, flare, 11 posterior synechiae, corneal clarity, lens clarity, snowballs, snow banking, vasculitis, optic disc hyperemia or swelling, and CME, either present on OCT (Zeiss, Cirrus HDOCT 5000), or fluorescein angiography (FA). An experienced ophthalmologist (JdB) scored FAs using the Fluorescein angiographic scoring system of the Angiography Scoring for Uveitis Working Group (ASUWOG). 13 We looked at the FA made before or up to 2.5 months after the ERG was made, for statistical analysis. If more than one FA was made, we used the FA with the highest overall score as an indicator of structural damage of previous severity of inflammation. We recorded per patient treatment with systemic steroids, methotrexate (MTX), mycophenolate mofetil and adalimumab and we recorded per eye the frequency of administered periocular corticosteroid injections. Statistical analysis For statistical analysis SPSS version 21.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago IL) was used. Elecrroretinography abnormalities were investigated in relation to clinical parameters. We performed all analyses twice, once using all 63 uveitis eyes, and once using only one eye per patient. We performed this second analysis as an alternative for paired sampling analyses. For this second analysis, we included the eye with the worst BCVA in case of a bilateral uveitis. If BCVA was the same in both eyes, a random eye was selected per patient. Pearson chi squared test or the likelihood ratio was applied for categorical variables, and a Student t-test or a Mann-Whitney U test was applied for continuous variables. Spearman rank correlation coefficient was used to find possible correlations between variables. We considered p-values below 0.05 as statistically significant. All tests were 2-tailed. Results Patient characteristics Most patients (91%; 30 out of 33) had a bilateral uveitis; 49% of the patients were male. Intermediate uveitis was seen in 64% of the patients and panuveitis in 36% of patients. In 3 patients uveitis was associated with Blau-syndrome, a rare hereditary disorder with a classical triad of arthritis, dermatitis and uveitis associated with a NOD2 mutation. 14 In the other 30 patients no underlying cause was found. 113 5