[Prevalence of endogenous uveitis in Kagoshima Prefecture, Southwest Japan]

Abstract

To estimate the current trend in prevalence of endogenous uveitis and HTLV-I-associated uveitis (HAU) in a local area, we sent questionnaires to all ophthalmologic clinics in Kagoshima Prefecture, southern Japan, which has a population of 1.8 million, with reference to uveitis patients seen during May-July 1993 and May-June 1994. Answers to the questionnaires were obtained from about half of the ophthalmologists in each survey session. The proportion of uveitis cases was on the average 0.4% of outpatients, and the prevalence of uveitis was estimated to be 40.4 x 10(-5). The major uveitis entity consisted of toxoplasmosis (7.8%), Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease (5.0%), Behçet's disease (4.1%), sarcoidosis (3.4%), and 71.3% of unclassified cases. An additional study for the infection with HTLV-I revealed that the seropositivity for anti-HTLV-I antibodies was 11 (17.5%) of 63 patients with distinct uveitis entities and 38 (30.4%) of 125 patients with etiologically undefined uveitis, indicating no significant difference in HTLV-I infection between the two groups. The prevalence of HAU was estimated to be 8.8 x 10(-5).