PPARA and dry eye syndrome: Furthermore, sleep deprivation in a mouse model study indicated that sleep deprivation induced dry eye by disrupting superficial corneal epithelial cells microvilli morphology, which is caused by sequential declines in the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor alpha (PPARα), transient receptor potential vanilloid 6 (TRPV6) expression, and Ezrin phosphorylation status (12).