INFLUENCE OF LENS AUTOFLUORESCENCE ON RETINAL NERVE-FIBER LAYER EVALUATION

Background: Yellow-brown coloration of the human lens increases with a ge and is associated with increasing lens autofluorescence. This may i nterfere with retinal image through scatter and absorption. Patients a nd Method: We measured the lens autofluorescence (AF) of 30 eyes of 30 healthy subjects and evaluated their retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) visibility from fundus photographs. These otherwise healthy eyes show ed a varying degree of yellow-brown coloration of the lens, Lens fluor ometry was carried out with a previously described technique using blu e-green AF range (495 nm/520 nm), RNFL photographs were taken with a C anon CF-60 ZA wide angle camera with blue (495 nm) interference filter and low-sensitivity, high resolution black-and-white film. Results an d Conclusion: Lens yellowing expressed here by means of lens autofluor escence measurements, was statistically significantly (r = -0.53, p = 0.0008) correlated with the RNFL visibility score. In stepwise regress ion analysis adding age to the model including only the maximum AF did not reduce the residual standard deviation statistically significantl y (p = 0.1). This suggests that lens yellowing has an effect on RNFL v isibility and may be an important confounding factor in clinical RNFL evaluation.