TAK is an important and underrecognized cause of ocular inflammation and ischemia in young patients; ocular involvement can precede systemic diagnosis, and early diagnosis and treatment results in a good visual outcome.
In this retrospective series of 13 TAK patients at a South Indian tertiary eye center, the disease predominantly affected young women.
Most patients first presented to an ophthalmologist rather than to another specialty.
Eye pain and diminution of vision were the most common presenting symptoms.
Ocular manifestations were varied, with ischemic changes and Takayasu retinopathy among the most frequent.
Presumed ocular tuberculosis led to an incidental diagnosis of TAK in two cases.
Imaging-based classification showed type I and type V as the most common TAK angiographic types.
Treatment comprised systemic corticosteroids, conventional DMARDs, and tocilizumab, with good visual outcomes on early treatment.
This study looked back at 13 patients with Takayasu arteritis, a rare inflammatory disease of the large blood vessels, who were seen at an eye hospital in South India between 2016 and 2025. Most were young women, with an average age of about 32. Nine of the 13 first sought care from an eye doctor, most often because of eye pain or reduced vision, and two had sudden vision loss. The eye problems varied. They included reduced blood flow to the eye, damage to the retina's blood vessels, a blocked retinal artery, pale optic discs, scleritis, and an unusual presentation resembling Tolosa Hunt syndrome. In two patients, doctors first suspected eye tuberculosis, and Takayasu arteritis was found incidentally. Treatment included steroids, immune-suppressing drugs (methotrexate and mycophenolate mofetil), and tocilizumab. This research suggests that eye symptoms can be an early sign of Takayasu arteritis, sometimes before the whole-body disease is recognized. It also suggests that eye doctors may play a key role in spotting the condition, and that early diagnosis and treatment were associated with good vision outcomes. The study is small and retrospective, so these findings are descriptive and cannot show how often this occurs more widely.
Babu K, Mooss V, Jois R. (2026). Ocular involvement in Takayasu arteritis - A case series from a tertiary eye center in South India.. Indian journal of ophthalmology. https://doi.org/10.4103/IJO.IJO_47_26