Is my keratoconus affected by changes in hormone status?
An insufficient number of pregnancies occurred during the CLEK Study to evaluate how pregnancy might affect the disease; however, several women entered menopause, and their data show that keratoconus continues to progress slowly at this period of life. Based on data collected beginning at year 5 from 149 women and 151 men aged 48 to 59 years at that time, no evidence demonstrated that visual acuity, keratometry readings, or progression of corneal scarring were related to gender or hormonal status. Take-away for clinicians At year 1, data on vision-specific quality of life began to be collected using the National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire (NEI-VFQ). Relative to age-matched controls wearing RGP contact lenses for chronic, non-keratoconus diagnoses, the patients in CLEK scored significantly worse on seven of eight NEI-VFQ subscales. Of even greater interest, the relatively young patients with keratoconus also scored significantly worse than participants in the Age-Relate
