Risk for Glaucoma

Blood Pressure Trouble Leaves Eyes at Risk for Glaucoma

TUESDAY, June 12 (HealthDay News) -- People with high pulse pressure -- the difference between systolic (beating heart rate) and diastolic (resting heart rate) blood pressure readings -- may be at increased risk for high-tension open-angle glaucoma, an eye disease involving the loss of certain retinal cells and atrophy of the optic nerve, experts say.

Researchers in the Netherlands studied more than 5,300 people, including 215 with probable or definite open-angle glaucoma. At the start of the study in 1990-1993, the participants underwent eye examinations and blood pressure checks.

By the third phase of the study, in 1997-1999, the researchers assessed the participants' arterial stiffness -- a change in artery structure associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

They also checked the intraocular pressure (pressure within the eye) of participants with open-angle glaucoma in order to determine whether they had high-tension open-angle glaucoma (intraocular pressure greater than 21 millimeters of mercury) or normal-tension open-angle glaucoma (pressure of 21 millimeters of mercury or less).

"We found that high-tension open-angle glaucoma was associated with high pulse pressure, possibly with increased carotid artery stiffness and, only in persons treated for systemic hypertension, with low diastolic perfusion pressure," the study authors wrote in a prepared statement.

"In these persons, normal-tension open-angle glaucoma was associated with high diastolic blood pressure, whereas the association between normal-tension open-angle glaucoma and low diastolic perfusion pressure was inverted,'" they added.

Further studies need to be conducted in order to confirm the findings, they said, but "we conclude that the mechanisms involved in the [cause] of high-tension open-angle glaucoma may be different from those in normal-tension open-angle glaucoma."