Epidemiology of Uveitis

Abstract

In this paper the literature concerning the demographic characteristics of uveitis will be reviewed, and a 10-year retrospective survey of the disease among residents of Rochester, Minnesota, will be presented. Descriptive epidemiology attempts to measure the risk of developing a disease in different populations and to characterize the affected individuals with respect to geographic location, age, sex, race, occupation, socioeconomic status, and time of illness. There is, to our knowledge, no data on the prevalence of uveitis in the United States based on a survey of all residents of a community. If the prevalence of uveitis could be measured accurately in several places, it might be possible to identify those population characteristics associated with an unusual prevalence of the disease. Clinical and laboratory research as well as epidemiological analysis could then be concentrated on populations with contrasting risks of developing uveitis, in the hope of identifying causal factors with a