Women on female hormonal therapy (FHT) may have an increased risk of incident noninfectious uveitis, according to researchers who tracked uveitis in these patients based on both diagnostic codes and documentation of corticosteroid treatment.

This retrospective cohort study evaluated 217,653 FHT-exposed women and 928,408 unexposed women.

or the primary outcome, the researchers defined incident noninfectious uveitis as a new diagnosis code for the condition followed by a second instance of the code within 120 days. For the alternative outcome, the researchers used a corticosteroid prescription or code for an ocular corticosteroid injection within 120 days of the uveitis diagnosis code instead of the second uveitis diagnosis code.

Based on the diagnostic codes alone, the investigators found the risk of incident noninfectious uveitis was not significantly different between cohorts. However, when they took corticosteroid prescriptions into account, they discovered that the FHT cohort was 1.21 times more likely to develop uveitis. When examined by anatomic subtype, they observed a slightly higher likelihood of incident uveitis in the exposed cohort, with a hazard ratio of 1.23. In terms of age, they noted that exposed women at least 45 years old at the time of FHT were 1.23 times more likely to develop uveitis.