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Study links high arterial pulse pressure with high-tension OAG
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Patients with a high pulse pressure appear to have an increased risk of developing high-tension open-angle glaucoma, according to a study by researchers in the Netherlands.
Caroline A.A. Hulsman, MD, PhD, and colleagues at the Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, and Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, analyzed data for 5,317 participants in the Rotterdam Study. Of these patients, 215 had either definite or probable open-angle glaucoma (OAG) and 5,102 patients did not have OAG.
The researchers divided OAG patients into two groups based on IOP. Patients in the low-tension OAG group had an IOP of 21 mm Hg or lower, and patients in the high-tension OAG group had an IOP above 21 mm Hg, according to the study.
"We found that high-tension [OAG] was associated with high pulse pressure, possibly with increased carotid arterial stiffness and, only in persons treated for systemic hypertension, with low diastolic perfusion pressure," the authors wrote.
"In these persons, normal-tension [OAG] was associated with high diastolic blood pressure, whereas the association between normal-tension [OAG] and low diastolic perfusion pressure was inverted," they wrote.
The authors noted that their finding need to be confirmed in other population-based studies and that their study included a low number of cases. However, "we conclude that the mechanisms involved in the etiology of high-tension [OAG] may be different from those in normal-tension [OAG]," they said.
The study is published in the June issue of Archives of Ophthalmology.