Letter to the Editor
Response to: Comment on (Choroidal Thickness in Patients with
Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Type Dementia)
Mehmet Bulut,
1
Aylin Yaman,
2
Muhammet Kazim Erol,
1
Fatma KurtuluG,
2
Devrim Toslak,
1
Berna DoLan,
1
Deniz Turgut Çoban,
1
and Ebru Kaya BaGar
3
1
Antalya Training and Research Hospital, Ophthalmology Department, 07050 Antalya, Turkey
2
Antalya Training and Research Hospital, Neurology Department, 07050 Antalya, Turkey
3
Department of Animal Science Biometry and Genetics Unit, Faculty of Agriculture, Akdeniz University, 07070 Antalya, Turkey
Correspondence should be addressed to Mehmet Bulut; bulutme73@yahoo.com
Received 28 June 2016; Accepted 9 August 2016
Academic Editor: Jes´ us Pintor
Copyright © 2016 Mehmet Bulut et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
In our study, we found out that choroidal thickness (CT)
decreased in the eyes of patients with both Alzheimer’s type
dementia (ATD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) com-
pared to the healthy control group. Terefore, we suggested
that CT value could be used as a new biomarker in early
diagnosis of ATD and MCI patients and follow-up of their
progression [1].
We would like to thank Uzun S. for the valuable com-
ments and contributions for our paper [2]. Tese comments
were useful for us. Choroidal thickness (CT) values may vary
during the day and on diferent days [3]. As we specifed
in our study, we performed optical coherence tomography
(OCT) measurements on all participants on minimum 3
diferent days and 3 times consecutively in each measurement
in order to ensure the lowest variation in CT values. We
used the average of the measurements in our study. All
measurements were performed from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Te systemic physiological and pathological conditions
of people may also infuence CT values [3]. Recent studies
showed that smoking and cofee decreased CT [4, 5]. Also
some systemic diseases like cardiovascular disease, diabetes
mellitus, and systemic arterial hypertension may afect CT
[6]. Furthermore, sildenafl and pseudoephedrine-like drugs
cause an increase in choroidal circulation and thickness
[7]. As we mentioned in our study, to ensure minimum
impact on CT data, participants with diabetes mellitus,
cardiovascular disease, systemic arterial hypertension, and
other serious chronic systemic diseases were excluded from
our study. Furthermore, smokers were also excluded. All
participants were instructed not to consume cafeine in 12
hours before the measurements. Moreover, patients who were
taking sildenafl and pseudoephedrine-like systemic drugs,
which might afect CT values, were not included in the study.
OCT measurements of all participants were performed in a
very cozy room where the light levels were adjusted. Using
all the above-mentioned criteria, we tried to make sure that
there was minimum impact on CT values.
Finally, since we could not defnitively detect how long
some of the ATD and MCI patients had had the disease at
the time of the frst diagnosis, the correlation between the
duration of the disease and CT was not analyzed in either
ATD patients or MCI patients.
Competing Interests
None of the authors has fnancial and proprietary interests in
any material or method mentioned and there is no public or
private support.
References
[1] M. Bulut, A. Yaman, M. K. Erol et al., “Choroidal thickness
in patients with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s
type dementia,” Journal of Ophthalmology, vol. 2016, Article ID
7291257, 7 pages, 2016.
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Journal of Ophthalmology
Volume 2016, Article ID 5496356, 2 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/5496356