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Background and objectives: We aimed to evaluate the correlation between periodontal disease (PD) and following ocular diseases via the National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan. Materials and Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted. Subjects were regarded as having PD according to the diagnostic codes. For comparison, each subject with PD was matched to one non-PD individual from the database after exclusion. The main outcome was defined as the development of infectious keratitis, endophthalmitis, orbital cellulitis, lacrimal duct infection, uveitis and infectious scleritis. Cox proportional hazard regression was used to yield the adjusted hazard ratios (aHR) of ocular diseases between the study and control groups. Results: A total of 426,594 subjects were enrolled in both the study and control groups. In the multivariable analysis, significantly higher rates of infectious keratitis (aHR: 1.094, 95% CI: 1.030&ndash, 1.161), uveitis (aHR: 1.144, 95% CI: 1.074&ndash, 1.218) and infectious scleritis (aHR: 1.270, 95% CI: 1.114&ndash, 1.449) were found in the study group. Concerning the PD interval, infectious keratitis (aHR: 1.159, 95% CI: 1.041&ndash, 1.291) and infectious scleritis (aHR: 1.345, 95% CI: 1.055&ndash, 1.714) would significantly occur in PD patients with an interval shorter than two years, individuals with a PD interval that ranged from two to five years were under a higher risk of developing uveitis (aHR: 1.184, 95% CI: 1.065&ndash, 1.315) and infectious scleritis (aHR: 1.386, 95% CI: 1.125&ndash, 1.708), and the rate of uveitis (aHR: 1.149, 95% CI: 1.038&ndash, 1.272) was significantly higher if PD persisted more than five years. Conclusions: The presence of PD will significantly elevate the risk of developing infectious keratitis, uveitis and infectious scleritis.

The vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) level in aqueous humor has been used as an indicator to monitor specific diseases in the retinal ischemic condition. For clinical diagnosis, only about 200 μL of aqueous humor can be collected from the anterior chamber before the threat of anterior chamber collapse. It is necessary to develop an inexpensive diagnostic approach with the characteristics of highly sensitive, short operation duration, and requires small clinical sample quantities. To achieve the main objective of this study, we first prepared bevacizumab to be conjugated with HRP. We then deposited 2 μL aqueous humor from patients with different diseases onto each test zone of paper-based 96-well plates. After the colorimetric results were performed via ELISA protocol, the output signals were recorded using a commercial desktop scanner for analysis. In this study, only 2 μL from the aqueous humor of each patient was required for paper-based ELISA. The mean aqueous VEGF level was 14.4 pg/mL from thirteen patients (N = 13) with senile cataract as the control. However, the mean aqueous VEGF level from other patients with proliferative diabetic retinopathy (N = 14), age-related macular degeneration (N = 17), and retinal vein occlusion (N = 10) showed VEGF increases to 740.1 pg/mL, 383 pg/mL, and 219.4 pg/mL, respectively.