What are the symptoms of eye muscle weakness?

Ocular muscle weakness is actually a relatively common disease, but many friends are not familiar with it. Eye muscle weakness can cause obvious symptoms in patients, such as strabismus, diplopia, eye movement disorders, etc. These have a great impact on the health of the eye and require timely consultation with a regular ophthalmologist and subsequent treatment.

Ocular myasthenia gravis refers to myasthenia symptoms limited to the extraocular muscles. More than 50% of myasthenia gravis patients present with ocular myasthenia gravis, of which 10%-20% can heal themselves, 20%-30% are always limited to the extraocular muscles, and among the remaining 50%-70%, the vast majority may develop systemic myasthenia gravis within two years.

Causes

1. Abnormal immune system of patients with ocular myasthenia gravis: Clinical studies have found that many immune indicators in patients with this disease are abnormal. After treatment, the clinical symptoms disappear but the abnormal immune indicators do not change. This may be an important factor in the instability of the disease and its easy recurrence.

2. Internal factors - genetics: In recent years, many studies on autoimmune diseases have found that they are not only related to major histocompatibility antigen complex genes but also to incompatible antigen complex genes, such as T cell receptors, immunoglobulins, cytokines, apoptosis and other genes.

3. External factors - environmental factors: Clinically, it has been found that certain environmental factors such as environmental pollution cause a decrease in immunity; excessive fatigue causes immune dysfunction; viral infection or the use of aminoglycoside antibiotics or D-penicillinamine and other drugs induce certain gene defects.

1. Loose upper eyelid skin: some elderly people's muscles gradually become thinner

The facial skin becomes loose and wrinkled due to shaving. Some people have loose skin on their upper face that exceeds the upper eyelid margin (the outer layer exceeds the inner layer). This phenomenon may occur even if you are not an elderly person. The inner upper eyelid margin of the upper eyelid should be used as the standard for measuring ptosis. Those with too loose upper eyelid skin can undergo surgery.

2. Strabismus: Eye movement disorders may be accompanied by strabismus or not. Most patients with myasthenia gravis do not have strabismus. A very small number have mild unilateral exotropia, and even fewer have binocular exotropia. In some cases, one eye is upright while the other eye is deviated upward and outward or downward and inward. The lower edges of the corneas of both eyes are not on the same horizontal line. If the disease occurs in childhood, the line of sight of the strabismus to the outside and above is blocked by the upper eyelid, affecting the development of vision and later causing amblyopia (weakened vision). Other strabismus may also develop amblyopia over time.

3. Diplopia: Seeing one object as two is called diplopia, which causes dizziness and inconvenience. It occurs due to strabismus or eye rotation disorder, and the images of both eyes cannot be fused into one image in the brain. Some patients with myasthenia may have diplopia. Since the degree of diplopia can be reduced when leaning in a certain direction, most patients can look at objects by tilting their heads. However, if diplopia reappears after myasthenia gravis is cured, it may be a sign of a recurrence of myasthenia gravis. The following three types are basically accompanied by eye symptoms, but very few may not have them.

4. Ocular rotation disorder: There are six extraocular muscle tendons attached to the outer shell of each eyeball, which manage its flexible rotation in all directions and the parallelism and coordination of binocular rotation. About two-thirds of myasthenia patients may have rotation disorders with varying degrees.