ReviewBMJ open ophthalmology2020
Silk fibroin safety in the eye: a review that highlights a concern.
Review in BMJ open ophthalmology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Stem Cell-based Treatment Strategies for Degenerative Diseases of the Retina.Current stem cell research & therapy · 2022Pooled it
- Can hydrolyzed silk fibroin derived fromTurkish journal of medical sciences · 2026Article
- Wound Dressing and Postoperative Complications Following Breast Reduction: A Retrospective Study of 250 Patients.Aesthetic surgery journal. Open forum · 2026Article
- Sericin from Bombyx Mori as a By-product for DLP 3D Printing in Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Applications.AAPS PharmSciTech · 2025Review
- Optimization and evaluation of oxygen-plasma-modified, aligned, poly (Є-caprolactone) and silk fibroin nanofibrous scaffold for corneal stromal regeneration.Biomaterials and biosystems · 2023Article
- Protein and polypeptide mediated delivery to the eye.Advanced drug delivery reviews · 2022Review
- Review
- Review
- Cutaneous Regeneration Mechanism of β-Sheet Silk Fibroin in a Rat Burn Wound Healing Model.Polymers · 2021Article
- Oxygen Permeability of Silk Fibroin Hydrogels and Their Use as Materials for Contact Lenses: A Purposeful Analysis.Gels (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The biomedical use of silk as a suture dates back to antiquity. Fibroin is the structural element that determines the strength of silk and here we consider the safety of fibroin in its role in ophthalmology. The high mechanical strength of silk meant sufficiently thin threads could be made for eye microsurgery, but such usage was all but superseded by synthetic polymer sutures, primarily because silk in its entirety was more inflammatory. Significant immunological response can normally be avoided by careful manufacturing to provide high purity fibroin, and it has been utilised in this form for tissue engineering an array of fibre and film substrata deployed in research with cells of the eye. Films of fibroin can also be made transparent, which is a required property in the visual pathway. Transparent layers of corneal epithelial, stromal and endothelial cells have all been demonstrated with maintenance of phenotype, as have constructs supporting retinal cells. Fibroin has a lack of demonstrable infectious agent transfer, an ability to be sterilised and prepared with minimal contamination, long-term predictable degradation and low direct cytotoxicity. However, there remains a known ability to be involved in amyloid formation and potential amyloidosis which, without further examination, is enough to currently question whether fibroin should be employed in the eye given its innervation into the brain.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.