Objective evaluation of corneal and lens densitometry in children with Down syndrome

The goal of this study was to compare anterior segment topographic measurements and densitometry measurements of the cornea and lens of patients with Down syndrome (DS) with those of healthy individuals.

Forty patients with DS (study group) and 43 healthy subjects (control group) were enrolled in this prospective study. Topographic measurements, including central corneal thickness (CCT), corneal volume (CV), anterior chamber depth, corneal densitometry (CD) and lens densitometry (LD) values, of the right eye of each participant were obtained.

The CCT and CV values were significantly lower in the study group compared to those in the control group. The mean LD-horizontal, LD-vertical, LD-areal, three dimensional (3D), peak and CD values were higher in the patients with DS (5.90±0.7, 6.01±0.7, 5.61±0.54, 9.70±2.1, 20.94±7.53 and 15.61±1.34, respectively) than in the healthy control subjects (5.72±0.65, 5.83±0.60, 5.56±0.75, 8.63±1.83, 17.29±5.40 and 14.3±1.03, respectively) (LD-horizontal P=0.144, LD-vertical P=0.184, LD-areal P=0.743, 3D P=0.033, peak P=0.029 and CD P=0.001).

The DS patients had higher CD and LD values. Additionally, the mean CCT and CV values in the DS group were less than those in the control group.