Reproducibility of the pupillary light reflex over short intervals in psychiatric patients and community volunteers

• Published in: Clinical physiology and functional imaging 2023-09, Vol.43 (5), p.365-372
• Main Authors: McCall, William V., Dinsmore, Jessica T., Brown, Alicia, Ribbens, Lucas T., Rosenquist, Peter B., McCloud, Laryssa, Miller, Brian J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adaptation; Adult; Autonomic nervous system; Dark adaptation; depression; Humans; Light; Measurement methods; Outpatients; Psychiatry; pupillometry; Reflex, Pupillary - physiology; Reproducibility; Reproducibility of Results; suicide; Velocity; Volunteers
• ISSN: 1475-0961; 1475-097X
• DOI: 10.1111/cpf.12834

The pupillary light reflex (PLR) is a method for measuring dynamic responses within the autonomic nervous system, and would have potential value as a point‐of‐care test in a psychiatry clinic if reproducible results could be obtained in a short period of time. We collected PLR from adult community volunteers and depressed outpatients with the purpose of demonstrating (1) that valid data could be obtained >90% of the time from both the community volunteers and the patients, and (2) that reproducible results could be obtained with repeated measurement over short periods of time. Valid data were captured for 90.3% of 76 participants, allowing for two attempts of the PLR per participant. Success rates were similar for depressed patients and community volunteers. Eighteen of these 76 participants provided repeated paired measurements after 5 and 10 min of dark adaptation, producing high correlations for maximum constriction velocity (MCV) between assay 1 and 2 (Pearson's r = 0.71, p