Related Experiment Video For Eye color
Updated: Sep 2, 2025
Author Spotlight: Ex Vivo OCT-Based Multimodal Imaging of Human Donor Eyes for Research into Age-Related Macular Degeneration
Published on: May 26, 2023
The Eyes Have It-for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis: a Preliminary Observation
Roy A Pleasants1,2, Armando D Bedoya3, Joel M Boggan4,5
1Division of Pulmonary Diseases and Critical Care Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 7202 Marsico Hall, 125 Mason Farm Rd, Chapel Hill, NC, USA. pleas005@email.unc.edu.
Introduction:
The disease origins of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), which occurs at higher rates in certain races/ethnicities, are not understood. The highest rates occur in white persons of European descent, particularly those with light skin, who are also susceptible to lysosomal organelle dysfunction of the skin leading to fibroproliferative disease . We had observed clinically that the vast majority of patients with IPF had light-colored eyes, suggesting a phenotypic characteristic.
Methods:
We pursued this observation through a research database from the USA Veterans Administration, a population that has a high occurrence of IPF due to predominance of elderly male smokers. Using this medical records database, which included facial photos, we compared the frequency of light (blue, green, hazel) and dark (light brown, brown) eyes among white patients diagnosed with IPF compared with a control group of lung granuloma only (no other radiologic evidence of interstitial lung disease).
Results:
Light eye color was significantly more prevalent in patients with IPF than in the control group with lung granuloma [114/147 (77.6%) versus 129/263 (49.0%], p < 0.001), indicating that light-colored eyes are a phenotype associated with IPF .
Conclusion:
We provide evidence that light eye color is predominant among white persons with IPF.
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