Choroidal Vascularity in Chronic Central Serous Chorioretinopathy and its association with risk single-nucleotide polymorphisms.

PURPOSE: To analyse the choroidal parameters of patients with chronic central serous chorioretinopathy (cCSC), and the association with CSC susceptibility genes.

METHODS: The choroidal vascular index (CVI) was obtained by binarizing spectral domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) enhanced depth images of cCSC patients and healthy age-matched controls. cCSC patients were genotyped for three CSC susceptibility SNPs: rs4844392 (mir-29b-2/CD46), rs1329428 (CFH) and rs2379120 (upstream GATA5).

RESULTS: 103 eyes with cCSC and 53 control eyes were included. There was a significant increase in the sub-foveal choroidal area in in both the affected (2.4 ± 0.6mm2) and fellow (2.2 ± 0.6mm2) eyes of patients with cCSC compared to controls (1.8 ± 0.5mm2, (p<0.0001 and p<0.0001). The CVI was reduced in cCSC patients 63.5 ± 3.1% compared to controls 65.4 ± 2.3% (p<0.001) and also in the affected compared to the fellow eyes 64.6 ± 2.9% (p<0.01). There was a significant association between CVI in the cCSC group and presence of the risk SNP rs2379120 at GATA5 (p<0.01).

CONCLUSION: The relative reduction of CVI in cCSC patients may suggest a persistence of vessel hyper-permeability over dilation in chronic disease. GATA5 is associated with CVI in cCSC patients and therefore, may have a role in choroidal vascularity.