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‘Family score’ helpful in predicting risk of glaucoma
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AMSTERDAM — Calculating a “family score” for an individual can help predict the likelihood the individual will develop glaucoma, according to a study. The score is predictive independent of the subject’s intraocular pressure, researchers found.
Caroline Hulsman, MD, PhD, and colleagues at the Netherlands Ophthalmic Research Institute split subjects from a larger population-based study into case and control probands. The study authors identified 50 patients with definite open-angle glaucoma (OAG) for inclusion and matched them with 112 control patients.
The study authors applied a new statistical method to estimate the risk of open-angle glaucoma for an individual, given the disease distribution in the patient’s relatives. The presence of OAG in siblings, half-siblings and offspring was quantified in a “family score” that considered the disease status, number of relatives affected, age, sex and degree of kinship to the patient.
“We found that an increase in family score was significantly associated with an increased risk of OAG,” the study authors report in the December issue of Archives of Ophthalmology. The association was independent of the presence of elevated intraocular pressure.
The authors recommend including the family score test to determine an individual’s risk of developing OAG.