Relation between mood and self-reported dry eye in contact lens wearers

The etiology of dry eye disease is poorly understood, and a significant percentage of the population reports experiencing frequent and burdensome symptoms. Recent evidence from other disciplines has shown a relation between self-rated mood and symptom reporting, and the purpose of this work was to explore the relation between self-rated mood and dry eye symptoms.

A cross-sectional/nested case-control study was used to examine factors associated with self-reported dry eye disease. Logistic and linear regression analyses were used to examine the relation between self-reported dry eye and positive and negative affect. All models included age, sex, education, income, race, and marital status, when appropriate.

Four hundred fifteen individuals were enrolled in the study. Two thirds were women, and the average age was 30.6 +/- 11.2 (SD) years. Two hundred fifteen (51.8%) self-reported dry eye. The average positive-affect scores were 34.6 +/- 5.9 and 34.9 +/- 6.0 (t = 0.58, P = 0.56) for those self-reporting dry eye and not reporting dry eye, respectively. The average negative-affect scores were 19.4 +/- 6.0 and 18.6 +/- 5.7 (t = -1.38, P = 0.17) for the dry eye and non-dry eye groups, respectively. After controlling for age, neither logistic regression nor linear regression showed a relation between positive or negative affect and self-reported dry eye.

Preliminary analyses suggest that self-reported mood is not related to dry eye status in contact lens wearers. Although symptoms are a hallmark of dry eye disease, they may not be significant enough such that they relate to affective states in the way they do for other symptomatic diseases with more associated pain (eg, arthritis).