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Clinical science
Effects of the re-esterified triglyceride (rTG) form of omega-3 supplements on dry eye following cataract surgery
  1. Jongyeop Park1,
  2. Young-Sik Yoo2,
  3. Eunhae Shin1,
  4. Gyule Han1,
  5. Kyungyoon Shin3,
  6. Dong Hui Lim1,4,
  7. Tae-Young Chung1
  1. 1 Ophthalmology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea (the Republic of)
  2. 2 Ophthalmology, Uijeongbu St. Mary's Hospital, The Catholic University of Korea, Uijeongbu-si, Gyeonggi-do, Korea (the Republic of)
  3. 3 Ophthalmology, Seongnam citizens medical center, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do, Korea (the Republic of)
  4. 4 Health Sciences and Technology, Samsung Advanced Institute for Health Sciences and Technology, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul 06355, Korea (the Republic of)
  1. Correspondence to Dong Hui Lim, Department of Ophthalmology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, 81 Irwon-Ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06351, Republic of Korea; donghui.lim{at}samsung.com and Tae-Young Chung, Department of Ophthalmology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, 81 Irwon-Ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06351, Republic of Korea; tychung{at}skku.edu

Abstract

Background/Aims To evaluate the clinical outcomes of the systemic re-esterified triglyceride (rTG) form of omega-3 fatty acids in patients with dry eye symptoms after cataract surgery.

Methods This prospective comparative cohort study comprised 66 patients complaining of new-onset non-specific typical dry eye 1 month after uncomplicated cataract surgery. Subjects were randomly allocated into control and omega-3 groups based on administration of the systemic rTG form of omega-3 fatty acids for 2 months, in addition to use of artificial teardrop. Ocular surface parameters (Schirmer’s test, tear break-up time, corneal staining score and matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9)) and subjective questionnaire results (Ocular Surface Disease Index (OSDI)) and Dry Eye Questionnaire [DEQ]) for dry eye were evaluated before and after omega-3 supplementation.

Results Two months after omega-3 supplementation, the Oxford score was lower in the omega-3 group than in the control group. There was an improvement of subjective symptom scores of OSDI and DEQ in the omega-3 group (both p<0.05). The ratio of increasing MMP-9 level in the omega-3 group was lower than that in the control group (p=0.027).

Conclusion The rTG form of omega-3 supplementation might be related to reduction of ocular surface inflammation rather than secretion of tears, and it might be effective for non-specific typical dry eye after uncomplicated cataract surgery.

Trial registration Number NCT04411615.

  • Ocular surface
  • Clinical Trial
  • Treatment Medical
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bjophthalmol-2020-317164

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    Footnotes

    • JP and Y-SY contributed equally as co-first authors.

    • DHL and T-YC contributed equally as co-corresponding authors.

    • Contributors DHL and T-YC contributed to conception and design of the study and Y-SY, GH, KS, DHL and T-YC conducted the study; (JP, Y-SY, ES, GH and KS) contributed to collection, management and interpretation of data; Y-SY contributed to data analysis; JP, Y-SY and ES contributed to writing of the article; DHL and T-YC contributed to preparation, review and approval of the manuscript. JP and Y-SY contributed equally to the manuscript as the co-first authors. DHL and T-YC contributed equally to the manuscript as the co-corresponding authors.

    • Funding This work was supported by a grant of Samsung Medical Center Research and Development Grant (#SMO120066) and a National Research Foundation of Korea grant funded by the Korean government’s Ministry of Education (NRF-2020R1A2C2014139; Seoul, Korea) which was received by T-YC.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data availability statement No data are available.

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