Statins May Protect Against Glaucoma

Oct. four, 2012 -- humans taking the popular ldl cholesterol-decreasing drugs known as statins diminished their threat for the most not unusual shape of glaucoma by way of 8%, in keeping with a new study.

That finding is published inside the October issue of Ophthalmology, a journal of the yankee Academy of Ophthalmology, and is based on fitness claims of more than 300,000 patients with excessive cholesterol who took statins for as a minimum two years.

Researcher Joshua Stein, MD, says statins can also improve blood flow to systems and tissue in the eye, together with the optic nerve, and reduce strain in the attention. Stein is an assistant professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the Kellogg Eye center on the college of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

He cautions, even though, that the association was only seen in sufferers who had been diagnosed with high cholesterol, and it’s unknown whether statins have any impact on reducing glaucoma danger amongst patients with everyday cholesterol levels.

“at the same time as our findings seem promising, earlier than we inspire physicians to exchange how they manage sufferers with glaucoma, we would really like to peer those findings confirmed,” Stein says. “even though statins are known to be enormously secure, there are a few acknowledged side outcomes associated with their use, and we want to ensure that the advantages these medicines might also have outweigh their viable facet results.”

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Glaucoma a not unusual problem

Stein and his team checked out statistics of greater than 500,000 patients with high cholesterol, submitted between January 2001 and December 2009, that still blanketed statistics approximately pharmacy prescriptions.

study contributors were age 60 or older. barely extra than 10,000 of them evolved open-attitude glaucoma, a main purpose of imaginative and prescient loss.

Glaucoma affects extra than 2.7 million individuals age 40 and older, in step with the yankee Academy of Ophthalmology. Open-perspective glaucoma is a situation that tends to progress slowly. stress builds up in the eye that damages the optic nerve, main to vision loss.


Robert Eckel, MD, beyond president of the yankee heart association, says other research has counseled viable fitness blessings to taking statins past lowering ldl cholesterol, but more investigation is wanted to understand how and why. Eckel is likewise a professor of medication at the Anschutz medical Campus on the college of Colorado in Denver. The energy of this precise examine, he says, is its size.

“We see a gain on this examine, but the benefit turned into modest,” he says. “And we don’t recognize the organic mechanism. [For doctors] prescribing statins to sufferers, this information would be beneficial. it might be interesting to understand what the long-time period consequences are due to the fact that statins are a lifelong remedy. An thrilling unanswered query is, ‘might this be a benefit in case you’re on statin therapy for 10, 15, 20 years? Do statins lessen irritation in the attention?' We don’t realize the biological mechanism

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