Transcriptomic profiling explains racial disparities in pterygium patients treated with doxycycline.

Purpose: To understand the differential responses to doxycycline between Caucasian and Hispanic patients observed in a previous clinical trial.

Methods: Primary cultures were established using pterygia excised from male Caucasian (n = 3) and Hispanic (n = 6) patients. The response of these cells to doxycycline was tested in a toxicity assay.

Oral doxycycline reduces pterygium lesions; results from a double blind, randomized, placebo controlled clinical trial.

Purpose: To determine whether oral doxycycline treatment reduces pterygium lesions.

Design: Double blind, randomized, placebo controlled clinical trial.

Participants: 98 adult patients with primary pterygium.

Molecular effects of doxycycline treatment on pterygium as revealed by massive transcriptome sequencing.

Pterygium is a lesion of the eye surface which involves cell proliferation, migration, angiogenesis, fibrosis, and extracellular matrix remodelling. Surgery is the only approved method to treat this disorder, but high recurrence rates are common. Recently, it has been shown in a mouse model that treatment with doxycycline resulted in reduction of the pterygium lesions.