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Study: Open-angle glaucoma patients have higher risk of developing Alzheimer's disease
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Open-angle glaucoma patients are at an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease over time, a review of 12 years of Medicare claims found.
"While other small case series have demonstrated a possible increased rate of glaucoma among patients with Alzheimer's disease, our analysis supports the hypothesis that patients with [open-angle glaucoma] have an increased risk of developing [Alzheimer's]," Yvonne Ou, MD, and colleagues said in a poster presentation here.
The researchers presented results of their study at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting.
They examined Medicare claims data of 54,232 individuals with open-angle glaucoma and an equal number of controls with no glaucoma or Alzheimer's disease diagnosis. All patients were followed for 12 years or until censored. The study used Cox's proportional hazard model analysis to compare the rate of Alzheimer's in the glaucoma and control groups.
The study found that, when not controlling for covariates, the hazard ratio for open-angle glaucoma patients developing Alzheimer's was 1.47 (95% confidence interval; range, 1.43 to 1.51).