ORIGINAL PAPER Correlation between clinical and cytological parameters of dry eye among diabetics in a Nigerian tertiary hospital Onyinyechukwu M. Onyekwelu . Olufisayo T. Aribaba . Vincent I. Onyekwelu . Oluwatobi O. Idowu . Monsurah O. Salami . Kabir B. Badmos . Adeola O. Onakoya Received: 27 March 2019 / Accepted: 10 April 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020 Abstract Purpose To correlate the clinico-cytological fea- tures of dry eye among diabetic patients attending Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Lagos. Methods This was a cross-sectional, comparative study among 104 diabetic and 104 age-/sex-matched non-diabetic participants. Demographics were obtained using interviewer-administered question- naire. Ocular Surface Disease Index (OSDI) question- naire was used for subjective assessment of dry eye. All participants underwent ocular examination and dry eye assessment including Schirmer I test, tear film break-up time (TBUT) and ocular surface staining. In addition, conjunctival impression cytology (CIC) samples were taken for histological assessment. Data were analysed using IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 20.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY USA). Results The mean age was 58.5 ± 10.05 years and 58.32 ± 10.48 years among the diabetics and non- diabetics, respectively (p = 0.856). The male/female ratio was 1:1.4. Three hundred and ninety-seven (199 diabetic and 198 non-diabetic) eyes were assessed. Diabetics had a significantly higher median OSDI This paper is part of a dissertation submitted to the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria in part fulfilment of the award of Fellowship of the Medical College of Ophthalmology, November 2017. O. M. Onyekwelu Á O. T. Aribaba Á A. O. Onakoya Department of Ophthalmology, Guinness Eye Centre, Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Lagos, Nigeria O. M. Onyekwelu (&) Glaucoma Department, Aravind Eye Hospital, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India e-mail: onyii.onyekwelu@gmail.com O. T. Aribaba Á A. O. Onakoya Department of Ophthalmology, College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria V. I. Onyekwelu Department of Histopathology, Clina-Lancet Laboratories, Lagos, Nigeria O. O. Idowu Department of Ophthalmology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA M. O. Salami Department of Ophthalmology, Hotel Dieu Hospital, Kingston, ON, Canada K. B. Badmos Department of Anatomic and Molecular Pathology, Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Lagos, Nigeria K. B. Badmos Department of Anatomic and Molecular Pathology, College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria 123 Int Ophthalmol https://doi.org/10.1007/s10792-020-01382-9