Retinal involvement in uveitis associated with Hodgkin disease

To describe a patient with Hodgkin disease with posterior uveitis who also had a thinning of the retina and an antiretinal autoantibody in his serum.

Our patient was a 58-year-old man who had been diagnosed with Hodgkin disease. He had a complete ophthalmologic examination including fluorescein angiography, electroretinography, perimetry, and spectral-domain optical coherence tomography. A search for antiretinal antibodies in the serum was made by Western blot analysis, and the retinal sites reactive to the antibodies were determined by immunohistochemistry.

The ocular signs were mild cellular infiltration in the anterior chamber and vitreous, and small, round chorioretinal lesions in the peripheral retina. The electroretinograms were slightly reduced. Small ring-like scotomas were detected in the Goldmann visual fields. An antiretina-specific 116-kDa antibody was detected in the serum by Western blot analysis, and the antibody reacted with the ganglion cell and inner nuclear layers of mice retinas. Although the visual acuities were maintained for over eight years, the macular thickness measured in the spectral-domain optical coherence tomography images was reduced.

The presence of an antiretinal autoantibody, granulomatous uveitis, and retinal thinning in a patient with Hodgkin disease suggests that the patient had a granulomatous uveitis associated with Hodgkin disease or lymphoma-associated uveitis with retinal involvement.