Finland: People with diabetes mellitus (DM) had a lower chance of developing open-angle glaucoma (OAG) in a recent study by Aapo Virtanen and colleagues. The findings of this study were published in Acta Ophthalmologica.
Optic nerve cupping, often increased intraocular pressure (IOP), gradual loss of vision field, and other anatomically defining characteristics are all symptoms of glaucoma, a group of disorders affecting the optic nerve fibers. The etiology of glaucoma is currently thought to involve both neurodegeneration and vasculopathy. The major goal of this study was to examine the incidence of glaucoma as assessed by approved prescription reimbursement claims or billed treatments for glaucoma over a 17-year follow-up period in a sizable Finnish population in order to determine the relationship between DM and glaucoma.
This population-based historic cohort was made up of people under ≥40 years old who began receiving DM treatment between 2001 and 2010 and a reference group that was matched for age, gender, and hospital district. People with DM and their matching non-diabetic reference pairs were compared in terms of OAG incidence. From medicine reimbursement certificates and hospital billing data, new glaucoma cases were found. Poisson regression models with adjustments for sex, age, hospital district, socioeconomic status, systemic drugs, and chronic illnesses were used to analyze incidence rate ratios (IRR).
The key findings of this study were:
1. 2721 (1.1%) of the 244 100 research participants who met the inclusion requirements went on to develop OAG. The period of follow-up was from 2001 to 2017.
2. When confounding variables were taken into account, DM was linked to a somewhat lower incidence of OAG (IRR 0.92).
Further research on the connection between DM and the risk of developing OAG would benefit from extensive longitudinal studies with equivalent case definitions for OAG and DM, followed by a meta-analysis. In this population-based longitudinal investigation, DM was related to a marginally decreased incidence of OAG.
Reference:
Virtanen, A., Haukka, J., Loukovaara, S., & Harju, M. (2022). Diabetes mellitus and risk of open‐angle glaucoma—A population‐based follow‐up study. In Acta Ophthalmologica. Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1111/aos.15240