Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction and aims: It is known that obesity is associated with retinal microvascular changes. Optical coherence tomography (OCT), a new imaging technique, is used to visualize the choroid. In addition, OCT can also give more beneficial information about systemic and eye diseases. We aim to investigate whether or not obesity may impact on choroid and macula thickness.

Material and methods: Forty-four subjects who were apply for obesity in our Endocrinology outpatient clinic [mean age 34.47±8.10 years, body mass index (BMI) 40.11±8.02 kg/m²] and 44 age-matched healthy control subjects (mean age 31.18±7.77 years; BMI 20.95±1.86 kg/m²) were included in our study. All of subjects in obesity group were selected according to BMI≥30 kg/m² whereas control group was selected according to BMI<25 kg/m². Anthropometric measurements, routine systemic evaluations and eye examinations were performed. The central fovea thickness (FT), the central fovea choroidal thickness (FCT), the thicknesses of nasal 500 (N500) micron and nasal 1500 (N1500) micron, and the thicknesses of temporal 500 micron (T500) and temporal 1500 (T1500) micron were measured by using enhanced-depth imaging optical coherence tomography (EDI-OCT).

Results: It was found that measurements of FT, FCT, T500, T1500, N 500 in obese group were different from control group (250.94 μm vs. 266.04 μm in FT P=0.004, 345.84 μm vs.313.77 μm in FCT P=0.007, 343.36 μm vs. 313.95 μm in T500 P=0.010, 334.47 μm vs. 310.04 μm in T1500 P=0.035, 340.05 μm vs. 310.54 μm in N500 P=0.014). However measurement of N1500 point was not significantly different from control group. We also found that there was only a negative correlation between BMI and central foveal thickness (r=−0.285, P=0.09) by using Pearson’s correlation analysis.

Conclusions: As a result, we showed that the choroid thickness in obese person is increase significantly. Therefore, obesity may influence on measurements of choroid thickness by OCT.