Personality of patients with central serous chorioretinopathy

Introduction: Central serous chorioretinopathy (CSC) is a disease of the retina that is a frequent cause of mild to moderate visual impairment. The disease can be precipitated by psychosocial stress and hypercortisolism while full remission will often be spontaneous within a few months. Risk factors have included male gender, increased plasma cortisol due to other conditions or steroid use and Type A behavior. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study comparing three research groups that included 100 CSC patients, 200 healthy volunteers, and 200 patients with other ophthalmic disease on their results in the Zuckerman–Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire (ZKPQ). Results: CSC patients differed from the other subjects on increased high Neuroticism-Anxiety, low Sociability, and high Aggression-Hostility. Conclusions: Since high Neuroticism is related to increased cortisol levels only in males, and high Aggression-Hostility is related to increased cortisol response, these findings point to the possibility of a robust neurobiological background to the etiopathogenesis of CSC that merits further research. The association of Type A behavior with CSC may be a spurious one and its widespread reference in ophthalmology texts should be re-examined.