As the incidence of dry eye disease increases, it’s becoming more important to intervene quickly and treat effectively. A team of researchers recently found that crowdsourced data could help to identify individuals with diagnosed and undiagnosed symptomatic dry eye and the associated risk factors.

This cross-sectional study analyzed 21,394 records of 4,454 users who had completed a dry eye questionnaire using a smartphone app. The app collected data on demographics, medical history, lifestyle, subjective symptoms and disease-specific symptoms.

The investigators first discovered 27.3% of participants had diagnosed and 72.7% had undiagnosed symptomatic dry eye. They then identified risk factors for symptomatic vs. non-symptomatic dry eye: younger age, female sex, pollinosis or hay fever, depression, mental illnesses other than depression or schizophrenia, current contact lens use, extended screen exposure and smoking. The risk factors for undiagnosed vs. diagnosed symptomatic dry eye, on the other hand, included younger age, male sex, absence of collagen disease, mental illnesses other than depression or schizophrenia, ophthalmic surgery other than cataract surgery and LASIK and current or past contact lens use.

“These findings could play a role in earlier prevention or more effective interventions for dry eye disease,” the study authors concluded in their paper.