Infectious Uveitis: Conversations with the Experts

While nearly 30% of the uveitis entities remain uncharacterized even today, ophthalmologists still must differentiate infectious uveitis from the more commonly occurring and perhaps better characterized immune-mediated non-infectious uveitis.

Infectious uveitis here is defined as inflammation of the uveal tract and surrounding structures caused by direct cytotoxic effect to ocular tissues by replicating infectious micro-organisms. This has always been one of the central tenets of the uveitis subspecialty: to always rule out infectious etiologies first.

The concept is straightforward but can be extremely challenging as the microorganisms causing intraocular infections are numerous and their manifestations protean. Depending on geographic and population characteristics, certain viruses, bacteria, fungi, or parasites may predominate. However, phenotypic expressions of even the same infectious organism can vary greatly, chronicity and recurrences can occur, and diagnostic modalities often are invasive yet non-definitive...