Black patients have higher risk for advanced visual field loss after glaucoma diagnosis
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Black patients had a higher risk for developing advanced visual field loss after a new diagnosis of primary open-angle glaucoma, according to a study.
Study author Louis R. Pasquale, MD, told Healio/OSN that these findings could show a need for earlier screening among Black people.
“These patterns don’t just pop up,” he said. “They take time to evolve. That means that people of African ancestry are getting the disease earlier than their white counterparts, and we really need to think about screening them earlier.”
In the study published in Translational Vision Science & Technology, Pasquale and colleagues analyzed data from the Nurses’ Health Study, Nurses’ Health Study II and Health Professionals Follow-up Study, including 209,036 participants aged 40 years or older who had no glaucoma at baseline. Medical records were used to identify 1,946 cases with incident primary open-angle glaucoma with visual field loss.
To identify risk factors for different types of visual field loss after new-onset glaucoma, Pasquale and colleagues analyzed participants ’ earliest record of visual field loss using archetypal analysis, a kind of artificial intelligence. They identified 14 archetypes, including four representing advanced loss patterns, nine for early loss patterns and one for no visual field loss.
Black participants had higher risk for early visual field loss archetypes and for advanced visual field loss archetypes (P = .0002) compared with non-Hispanic white participants.
While Black participants made up less than 2% of the study population, Pasquale said these increased risks were identified even after controlling for systemic factors that could confound the findings.
Pasquale said AI could allow researchers to identify even more unique determinants and patterns of disease in glaucoma.
“We hope that this will begin to shed light on the heterogeneity that is primary open - angle glaucoma,” he said.
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