Meesmann corneal dystrophy

Meesmann corneal dystrophy is a rare hereditary eye disease inherited in an autosomal dominant pattern. It is a type of corneal dystrophy and a keratin disease. Tiny cysts form in the outermost layer of the cornea, the anterior corneal epithelium, which also becomes fragile. It usually affects both eyes and worsens over time, although many people have no symptoms or only mild ones. Two forms are described, Meesmann corneal dystrophy 1 and 2, which involve the genes KRT3 and KRT12 respectively, and a single mutated copy of either gene produces just one of the two forms. The disease is named after the German ophthalmologist Alois Meesmann, and is also called Meesmann-Wilke syndrome after Meesmann and Wilke in 1939. Stocker and Holt described a variant in the mid 1950s that is called Stocker-Holt dystrophy.