Sobrin L, et al. - Authors probed if there was a relationship between hypovitaminosis D and incident noninfectious uveitis. Findings suggested an association between hypovitaminosis D and noninfectious uveitis. Nonetheless, a causal relationship could not be established by these studies.

Methods

• Experts conducted a retrospective case-control study using the data from a health care claims database containing deidentified medical claims from a large private insurer to identify 558 adults enrolled from January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2016, who received a diagnosis of noninfectious uveitis from an eye care clinician (with receipt of a confirmatory diagnosis within 120 days of the initial diagnosis) and who had a vitamin D level measured within 1 year before the first diagnosis.
• They included the exclusion criteria having systemic disease or receiving medication known to lower vitamin D levels, having undergone intraocular surgery, and having infectious uveitis.
• On the basis of age, sex, race/ethnicity, and index date (2790 controls), each case patient was matched with 5 controls.
• The vitamin D level of controls was determined either within 1 year before or within 6 months after receiving an eye examination with normal findings.
• The association between hypovitaminosis D and noninfectious uveitis was examined using multiple logistic regression models.
• The association of noninfectious uveitis with hypovitaminosis D (vitamin D level ≤20 ng/mL) was assessed with the primary, prespecified analysis.

Results

• As per the data, the 558 cases and 2,790 controls were matched on age, and each group had a mean (SD) age of 58.9 (14.7) years.
• Findings suggested that in the cohort of 3,348 patients, 2,526 (75.4%) were female, and the racial/ethnic distribution in the matched samples was 2,022 (60.4%) white, 552 (16.5%) black, 402 (12.0%) Hispanic, 162 (4.8%) Asian, and 210 (6.3%) unknown.
• They noted that patients with normal vitamin D levels had 21% lower likeliness of having noninfectious uveitis vs patients with low vitamin D levels (odds ratio [OR], 0.79; 95% CI, 0.62-0.99; P=.04).
• Results demonstrated that in a race-stratified analysis, a relationship between vitamin D and uveitis was found in black patients (OR, 0.49; 95% CI, 0.30-0.80; P=.004) and was qualitatively similar but nonsignificant in white patients (OR, 0.87; 95% CI, 0.62-1.21;P=.40) and Hispanic patients (OR, 0.60; 95% CI, 0.33-1.10;P=.10).