Attention Men With Sjogren's: Higher Incidence of Serious Ocular Manifestations

Image found on JAMA

Thanks to the Sjogren's Society Canada for tweeting the link to this study entitled 'Ocular Complications of Primary Sjogren's Syndrome in Men' published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology in their 2015 Jun 17 edition.

The retrospective cohort study concluded:

Men with primary SS have a higher frequency of serious ocular and systemic manifestations. Although primary Sjögren syndrome is typically considered a disease of middle-aged women, it may be underdiagnosed and consequentially more severe in men. Physicians should have a lower threshold to test for SS in men with dry eye.

I am glad to see more studies that focus (See what I did there? Sorry.) on the male Sjogen's population, which in my humble opinion deserves much more research along with the young men and women with Sjogren's especially after reading this commentary from Dr. Fredrick Vivino on the SSF blog Conquering Sjogren's:

Conquering Sjogren’s: Follow us on our journey to change the face of Sjogren’s
Ask the Doctor: Diagnosing Men & Children with Sjogren’sPosted on Tue, Sep 30, 2014 

Is there any speculation as to what’s driving this big upswing in the diagnosis of men and children with Sjögren’s? 

My gut feeling is that it has to do with the improvements in awareness and medical and dental education in recent years. The Sjögren’s Syndrome Foundation (SSF) has spent years trying to train the physicians and nurse practitioners about how prevalent and serious the disease is. We finally have a celebrity who unfortunately was diagnosed with Sjögren’s and although nobody likes to see somebody become ill, it has done a lot to help the entire public realize how serious it is, particularly the idea that people look a lot better than they feel and that it may take years to diagnose it unless you take the symptoms seriously.  

I can tell you at the University of Pennsylvania, where I work, the oldest medical school in the United States, we only started giving our first Sjögren’s lecture to the first year medical students about four years ago. And that was only after years of me fighting with the curriculum committee to get it included in the rheumatology course for the first year students. So, we’ve made a lot of progress and I think that’s an example of the benefits of all this work. 

-Frederick B. Vivino, MD, MS, FAC

So gentlemen? Bear in mind this increased potential for serious eye disease.

More research. More awareness. These are our biggest allies in our fight to conquer Sjogren's syndrome.