• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

Tears Show Inflammation

Ecoclimber

Senior Member
Messages
1,011
An Interesting discovery and concept

Salvisberg C, Tajouri N, Hainard A, Burkhard PR, Lalive PH, Turck N.Exploring the human tear fluid: discovery of new biomarkers in multiple sclerosis. Proteomics Clin Appl. 2014 Jan 31.

PURPOSE:
Multiple sclerosis is the first cause of progressive neurological disability among young adults living in Western countries. Its diagnosis is mostly based on clinical evaluation, neuroimaging and in some cases cerebrospinal fluid analysis but no definitive diagnostic test exists. We proposed here that the exploration of tears from multiple sclerosis patients could lead to the discovery of new biomarkers.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN:
Thirty multiple sclerosis patients (20% men) recruited to the Geneva University Hospitals were included in our study (mean age ± SD (years): 42.4 ± 15.9). Twenty five control patients (32% men) were also enrolled (mean age ± SD (years): 42.7 ± 15.1). Tears, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) or blood was collected for each patient. Three independent quantitative (tandem mass tag, TMT) experiments were carried out between tears from multiple sclerosis and control patients. Protein verification was performed by western blot on tears and CSF and by ELISA on serum samples.

RESULTS:
Combined proteomics analyses provided 185 identified tear proteins. Among the differential proteins, alpha-1 antichymotrypsin was the only one to be significantly increased in the 3 experiments with similar ratios (ratios 1.6 to 2.5, p<0.05). Its tear, CSF and serum elevation were further confirmed by western blot and ELISA, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE:
This study supports the concept that modifications of the tear proteome can reflect biological abnormalities associated with multiple sclerosis and perhaps other inflammatory conditions affecting the CNS. In addition, alpha-1-anti-chymotrypsin elevation in tear fluid emerges as a promising biomarker for the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.

So the question would be if they looked in other inflammatory conditions would it show in their eyes...
 

xchocoholic

Senior Member
Messages
2,947
Location
Florida
I wonder how this relates to the chemistry of the tears people shed when in extreme pain. Kidney stoners can relate.
 

lansbergen

Senior Member
Messages
2,512
An alternative non-invasive test to blood and various other secretions and excretions. Worth investigating further I suspect.

I wonder if sweat can be similar?

With sweat you have the problem bacteria at the skin can influence it.