Indeed, conjunctivitis increases vascular permeability and results in leakage of plasma compounds into the tear film, as exemplified by human patients with conjunctivitis and dry eye who were noted to have significantly greater serum albumin in tears compared to healthy controls (Zavaro et al., 1980; van Bijsterveld and Janssen, 1981; Janssen and van Bijsterveld, 1986; Li et al., 2010), and dogs with spontaneous keratoconjunctivitis sicca for whom the clinical signs of conjunctivitis were positively correlated with tear levels of serum proteins (Fullard et al., 1995). The gene discussed is ALB; the disease is dry eye syndrome.