Is pre-eclampsia / eclampsia a risk factor for non-infective uveitis?
Reviewed by Tasmin Berman

This population based retrospective matched cohort study was the first of its kind to suggest an association between preeclampsia / eclampsia (PEE) and non-infective uveitis (NIU). They used the Longitudinal National Health Insurance database in Taiwan to assess 2073 post-delivery women who were diagnosed with PEE between January 1997 and December 2012 and who had no prior history of uveitis. Patients were then matched by age, income, urbanisation and co-morbidities to 8292 females without PEE. Patients were followed up for five years where it was found that 14 (0.7%) suffered from NIU compared with 19 of 8292 (0.2%) post-delivery women without PEE. This equates to a rate of 1.5 and 0.5 per 1000 person – years among post-delivery women with and without PEE, respectively (incidence rate ratio 2.96). They concluded that post-delivery women with PEE had a higher incidence of NIU and this risk factor should be recognised. This was especially true in women >35 years of age. This study has several limitations; they rely heavily on the coding of diagnosis of patients and therefore the clinical course, severity, manifestations and medications are difficult to evaluate. In addition, they do not differentiate between nulliparous and multiparous women. A larger prospective clinical trial is required to investigate this proposed relationship further.

Pre-eclampsia/eclampsia as a risk factor of noninfectious uveitis among post-delivery women.
Chen W, Yang Y, Lee C, et al.
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF OPHTHALMOLOGY
2019;198:166-73.