Current diagnosis of keratoconus is based on overt clinical signs. This means that the pathology can only be detected when it has a clinical manifestation; i.e. when the patient already has already lost a considerable amount of sight and the surface of the cornea is significantly deteriorated.
CORNEA_project holds the exclusive exploitation rights of the only known biomarkers that enable keratoconus to be detected early, even before the presence of clinical signs, with very high sensitivity and specificity rates.
These biomarkers, whose clinical utility is protected by a patent, are the only ones known to have a high degree of expression in patients even in cases far below what would be subclinical keratoconus, demonstrating sufficient sensitivity to diagnose keratoconus at the earliest stages, prior to the appearance of detectable clinical signs. This puts us well ahead of current diagnostic methods.
The correlation between the expression of these biomarkers and the onset, progression and severity of keratoconus makes them unique tools to diagnose and monitor the pathology and prevent problems associated with refractive surgery, such as post-LASIK ectasia.