Systemic intravenous abciximab: a novel treatment for acute central retinal artery occlusion?

tein, blood cell counts, liver and renal functions, serology for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), toxoplasma and syphilis, quantiferon -TB Goldtest and in children anti-nuclear antibody). Radiological chest examination was also performed and if abnormal, the patient was referred to a pulmonologist. HLA-B27 typing was not available. Our results are shown in Table 1. Anterior uveitis (AU) was the most common anatomical type. Infectious uveitis was diagnosed in 34% and noninfectious systemic disease in 7% of patients. The remainder (59%) was of undetermined origin. The diagnosis of ocular toxoplasmosis (OT) was made in 24 patients including two HIV-positive patients. Additionally, 24 of 48 patients with positive toxoplasma serology were diagnosed with AU of whom 7/24 had an IgG titre >122 IU/ml. Three patients were HIV positive; two had OT and one had AU with positive toxoplasma IgM serology. A positive Quantiferon -TB Goldtest was found in seven of 100 patients, but none had active pulmonary tuberculosis. Sarcoidosis was diagnosed in one patient. In children, OT was commonly seen (five of nine, 56%). In this first study on uveitis in Suriname, toxoplasma chorioretinitis was the most common cause, but the exact aetiology could not be established in the majority of cases. The high prevalence of AU is similar to previous studies throughout the world and the high prevalence of OT in other South American countries was previously noted. Remarkably, seven patients with idiopathic AU had high IgG antitoxoplasma titres. Temporary AU has been reported in various systemic infections and the association between systemic toxoplasmosis and AU has been previously reported (Kongyai et al. 2012). We were not able to perform extensive and intraocular tests for the identification of infectious causes and the real number of patients with infectious uveitis might have been even higher than found by us. The lack of diagnosed non-infectious entities is probably in part due to limited availability of diagnostic tools. Our study from Suriname points out that at least 34% of uveitis cases were of infectious origin with toxoplasmosis being the most common. Further, we demonstrate that tuberculosis-associated uveitis and HIV-infected patients with uveitis are scarce. Our findings will be used for the development of a targeted uveitis screening programme in Suriname.