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Diabetes may be a risk factor for glaucomatous optic neuropathy
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Prospective studies are warranted to determine if open-angle glaucoma patients with diabetes have a more aggressive course than patients with glaucoma but without diabetes, a group of Japanese researchers said.
Makoto Nakamura, MD, PhD, and colleagues at the Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine noted that retinal ganglion cell apoptosis is a fundamental pathology of open-angle glaucoma. Controversy remains about whether diabetes and open-angle glaucoma are associated, they said. “This inconsistency is derived from selection-, recall- or survival-bias or misclassification due to low incidence of the two diseases,” the researchers said.
The latest data from this group showed that retinas from rats with streptozotocin-induced diabetes had significantly more apoptotic cells than those from rats with diabetes alone or with chronic glaucoma alone.
The study is published in the January issue of Ophthalmologica.