No concrete link found between vitamin D, glaucoma
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Researchers identified no causal relationship between vitamin D and primary open-angle glaucoma despite the fact that previous studies found an association.
“Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin, considered one of the essential nutrients to sustain health, and there has been increasing interest in its role in glaucoma pathogenesis and progression,” Brandon Huynh, Westmead Hospital, and colleagues wrote. “The aim of this review is to summarize the evidence implicating low vitamin D status as a potential risk and prognostic factor in primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) and identify future areas of research.”
Although many cross-sectional and case-control studies have found POAG to be associated with a vitamin D deficiency, a concrete causal relationship has yet to be established, the authors said.
While a meta-analysis of three studies found no significant difference in vitamin D levels or IOP values between POAG patients and controls, other early interventional studies found administering intramuscular vitamin D in addition to other IOP-lowering medication yielded promising results.
Recent genome-wide association studies for vitamin D levels in combination with studies involving POAG, IOP or exfoliation glaucoma could be used to further demonstrate the causal effect of vitamin D in POAG and other types of glaucoma, they said.
“The studies to date do not provide a direct link between vitamin D deficiency and POAG; however, they do lend significant weight to pursue further studies,” Huynh and colleagues concluded. “The vitamin D status of patients with glaucoma and interventional and mechanistic studies would be valuable to evaluate the temporal and causal relationship between vitamin D and POAG risk and progression.”
Perspective
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Lisa M. Young, OD, FAAO
Low levels of vitamin D have been associated with cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, diabetes, autoimmune disease, cancer and depression. In the early 2000s, we learned from the Age-Related Eye Disease Study that this fat-soluble vitamin is not only essential to our systemic health, but our ocular health as well.
More recently, there is increasing interest in the association of vitamin D levels and the pathogenesis of glaucoma, as ongoing research has suggested that POAG could possibly be associated with a vitamin D deficiency. Huynh and colleagues attempted to further define this relationship by reviewing recent cross-sectional and case-control study outcomes that addressed this potential link. They concluded that there is, in fact, an association between the two, but a specific causal relationship has yet to be identified.
This potential relationship could not only alter the way that we manage glaucoma but also help facilitate the prevention of this sight-threatening disease. At this point, more information and solid research-based evidence are necessary to substantiate these findings, but let’s cross our fingers and hope that we have our eyes on something big.
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