Personality of patients with central serous chorioretinopathy

Central serous chorioretinopathy (CSC) is a disease of the retina that is a frequent cause of mild to moderate visual impairment. The disease can be precipitated by psychosocial stress and hypercortisolism while full remission will often be spontaneous within a few months. Risk factors have included male gender, increased plasma cortisol due to other conditions or steroid use and Type A behavior.

This is a cross-sectional study comparing three research groups that included 100 CSC patients, 200 healthy volunteers, and 200 patients with other ophthalmic disease on their results in the Zuckerman-Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire (ZKPQ).

CSC patients differed from the other subjects on increased high Neuroticism-Anxiety, low Sociability, and high Aggression-Hostility.

Since high Neuroticism is related to increased cortisol levels only in males, and high Aggression-Hostility is related to increased cortisol response, these findings point to the possibility of a robust neurobiological background to the etiopathogenesis of CSC that merits further research. The association of Type A behavior with CSC may be a spurious one and its widespread reference in ophthalmology texts should be re-examined.