Central serous chorioretinopathy closely associated with intense exercise: Study

Italy: A new study by Felice Cardillo Piccolino and colleagues found that intense physical activity (PA) associates with a 5-fold increase in the risk of central serous chorioretinopathy (CSCR). It was published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology. 

Consecutive patients with active central serous chorioretinopathy and a comparable control group of healthy volunteers were included in this case-control research, which was conducted across many centers. With the help of a condensed version of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire, both groups were questioned on their PA. For the activities demanding intense effort and to calculate the amount of energy expended represented in the metabolic equivalent of activity, the Ainsworth Compendium of PAs was used as a reference (MET). The primary outcome metric was in the two groups, a moderate/high practice of vigorous PA was contrasted with a low/absent practice of vigorous PA.

The key findings of this study were:

1. The study comprised 105 healthy control subjects and 105 individuals with CSCR.

2. In comparison to the control group, 63.5% of cases with CSCR and 26% of cases showed moderate to high vigorous PA respectively.

3. In the CSCR group, the vigorous PA MET values were 2173.2 ± 2081.5, while in the control group, they were 1216.3 ± 524.

4. With moderate to high levels of vigorous PA, there was a 5.58% chance of developing an illness.

In conclusion, the findings of this study suggest that in people susceptible to central serous chorioretinopathy, frequent and strong Physical Activity and the hypertension episodes it brings on might upset the delicate hemodynamic balance in the choroid, increasing choroidal vascular decompensation and active illness.

Reference: 

Piccolino, F. C., Fruttini, D., Eandi, C., Nicolò, M., Mariotti, C., Tito, S., & Lupidi, M. (2022). Vigorous Physical Activity as a Risk Factor for Central Serous Chorioretinopathy. In American Journal of Ophthalmology. Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajo.2022.08.002