Abstract
SummaryDetailed investigations of the composition and changes in the composition of the tears of the ocular surface have provided new ways of evaluating patient outcomes. This intimate knowledge comes from the ability to very accurately quantify proteins found in the tears. As such proteomics as a method is rather similar to performing hundreds or thousands of ELISA assays (which would be an impossible task as the tear volume is insufficient). Moreover, the results using only a few microliters of tears are reproducible so that patients can be statistically evaluated for examining outcomes. Tear proteins can be evaluated in some cases according to their source: for example, lacritin, and lysozyme are secreted from the lacrimal gland while the pro‐inflammatory proteins S100A8 and S100A9 are secreted by PMNs and ocular surface epithelial cells. The ability to indicate which proteins support ocular surface and which are inflammatory can reveal how a therapeutic treatment is changing or has not changed the basic pathology.
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