Featured Image Credit: Getty Images/Carlos Barquero
Topics: Health
William Morgan
A person's eyes are not just a window to their soul, they can also be a fairly direct window into their bodily health that can tell a physician if there is something going seriously wrong under the hood.
To the average person, spotting a glint in someone's eye is a sign that they are enjoying themselves but for anyone with medical training, seeing that sparkle can be an early warning sign that warrants a deeper investigation into that person's health.
This is why many trips to the doctor's office will involve a cursory eye examination, as it can quickly reveal everything from unusually high blood pressure to unhealthy cholesterol levels, and even serious neurological or autoimmune conditions.
But if they look into your eyes and notice an odd-coloured ring surrounding your iris, that can be a tell-tale sign that dangerous substances are building up in your vital organ as a result of a rare genetic condition, or even that your eyes are beginning to form into a conical shape.
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Should someone look into your eye and spot a brownish-yellow ring surrounding the iris, this is a fairly infamous sign of the rare genetic condition known as Wilson's disease, which prevents the body from properly getting rid of excess copper.
Surprisingly, this ring is actually made up of tiny copper deposits that are building up in your eye, as well as in your brain and liver. 95 percent of people who inherit this condition will present with this fairly obvious external sign that something is going wrong inside of their body.
With the ring becoming more prominent over time, most people with Wilson's disease will be diagnosed before they turn 35, with some being informed they have the condition before the age of five.
Copper is essential in small amounts for the development of healthy bones, nerves, and skin pigmentation. It is meant to be removed from your body using bile produced by your liver.
Other rare circumstances can also cause this circle to form around your iris, known as a Kayser-Fleischer ring, including some chronic liver diseases and continuous environmental exposure to copper.
Without treatment, this condition can trigger sudden liver failure from the copper buildup, as well as debilitating symptoms outlined by the Mayo Clinic, like jaundice, kidney stones, anaemia, and even personality changes or depression.
Treating Wilson's disease involves using copper chelating drugs, which essentially bind to copper in your body and force it into your bloodstream, so that your kidneys can simply filter it out.
This is then followed by lifelong medication to prevent copper from building up in your system again.
One particularly worrying one that can be seen in your eye is a result of a condition called keratoconus, which has a very different root cause to Wilson's, but a similar reason for showing as a ring around your iris.
Rather than the golden-brownish appearance of a Kayser-Fleischer ring, this condition appears as an incomplete greenish-brown circle due to the build-up of iron deposits in the membrane of the cornea.
Simply called a Fleischer ring, spotting this symptom early could prevent serious damage to your eyesight, as keratoconus will make your eye's cornea become thinner and weaker over time.
If left untreated, this will ultimately cause your cornea to become increasingly cone-shaped, triggering blurry vision that will worsen over time.
Depending on the severity of this inherited genetic condition, treatment can vary from a good pair of glasses to a full corneal transplant
But if someone says you have a particular sparkle in your eye, the most likely reason is that you are having a good day, as both of these health issues are relatively rare - with Wilson's disease affecting one in 30,000 and roughly one in 1000 people affected by some form of keratoconus.