CHICAGO, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- Childhood rubella vaccinations may have almost eliminated an inflammatory eye disease from the U.S.-born population, a study shows.
The study, published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology, found less incidence of Fuchs heterochromic iridocyclitis, or FHI -- a chronic inflammatory disease of the eye that causes cataract and glaucoma and can lead to blindness -- as the number of eye patients who received rubella vaccinations as children increased.
"We don't know what causes FHI," Dr. Debra Goldstein of the University of Illinois at Chicago said in a statement. "But we were seeing changes in the incidence of the disease and in the makeup of the patient population with the disease -- fewer American-born FHI patients, and those we did see were older."
The percentages of FHI and two other eye inflammatory diseases were about equal in patients born before rubella vaccinations -- 1919-1958. There was a 69 percent drop in FHI in patients born from1959 to 1968, and a further 40 percent drop in patients born from 1969 to 1978. Only one FHI patient was born during the decade 1979 to 1988.
