Vorsitzende/r: Jesper Hjortdal, Aarhus C, Denmark

Metabolic stress, imbalance between pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines, and increase in proteases or a decrease in proteinase inhibitors have recently been suggested to play an important role in keratoconus pathogenesis. New biomarkers discriminating between patients with and without keratoconus have recently been shown to be promising and may add to the current corneal shape-based diagnostic tools. Corneal-cross linking is today generally accepted as an effective treatment to halt keratoconus progression although long-term efficacy of the treatment still needs to be determined.