Prevalence of dry eye yndrome among U women

Purpoe Dry eye yndrome (DE) i believed to be one of the mot common ocular problem in the United tate (U), particularly among older women. However, there are few tudie decribing the magnitude of the problem in women and how thi may vary with demographic characteritic. Deign Cro-ectional prevalence urvey. Method tudy population: we urveyed 39,876 U women participating in the Women’ Health tudy about a hitory of diagnoed DE and dry eye ymptom. Main outcome meaure: we defined DE a the preence of clinically diagnoed DE or evere ymptom (both dryne and irritation contantly or often). We calculated the age-pecific prevalence of DE and adjuted the overall prevalence to the age ditribution of women in the U population. We ued logitic regreion to examine aociation between DE and other demographic factor. Reult The prevalence of DE increaed with age, from 5.7% among women < 50 year old to 9.8% among women aged ≥ 75 year old. The age-adjuted prevalence of DE wa 7.8%, or 3.23 million women aged ≥ 50 in the U. Compared with White, Hipanic (odd ratio [OR] = 1.81, confidence interval [CI] = 1.18–2.80) and Aian (OR = 1.77, CI = 1.17–2.69) women were more likely to report evere ymptom, but not clinically diagnoed DE. There were no ignificant difference by income (P[trend] = .78), but more educated women were le likely to have DE (P[trend] = .03). Women from the outh had the highet prevalence of DE, though the magnitude of geographic difference wa modet. Concluion Dry eye yndrome leading to a clinical diagnoi or evere ymptom i prevalent, affecting over 3.2 million American women middle-aged and older. Although the condition i more prevalent among older women, it alo affect many women in their 40 and 50. Further reearch i needed to better undertand DE and it impact on public health and quality of life.