This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Low night diastolic blood pressure a possible risk factor for glaucoma in migraine patients
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
CHICAGO — An excessive drop in night diastolic blood pressure was found in patients with glaucoma and migraine, showing that low blood pressure at night could be a possible risk factor for glaucoma development in patients with migraine, researchers found.
Yury S. Astakhov, MD, PhD, and colleagues presented their results in a poster study here at the joint meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Middle East Africa Council of Ophthalmology.
"The comparison of median values of [blood pressure] monitoring in [open-angle glaucoma/migraine] group of patients (12 cases) with those in patients with migraine without glaucoma (16 cases), revealed that the only statistically significant different parameter was the minimal night diastolic [blood pressure]," they said.
The study looked at 28 patients with migraine ranging in age from 35 to 68. Of those patients, 12 had glaucoma, with eight normal tension glaucoma cases and four primary open-angle glaucoma cases. Blood pressure was measured in patients for at least 24 hours.
Daytime and nighttime blood pressure results were compared. Dr. Astakhov and colleagues found that more than 20% of patients with glaucoma and migraine were "overdippers" or had excessive decrease of night diastolic blood pressure.