People who take statins may be less likely to develop glaucoma, research suggests. The eye condition occurs when the main nerve connecting the eye to the brain becomes damaged. It is most common among adults aged 50 and over.
Data from 210,000 statin users compared
Using data from a global database, US researchers compared 210,000 people who had a history of statin use over the last 20 years with a matched group of 210,000 people who had no record of using the cholesterol-lowering drugs.
Statin use was linked to a 15% lower risk of developing the most common form of glaucoma, called open-angle glaucoma. At five years, there were 4,771 new diagnoses of glaucoma in the statin group (2.3%) and 5,491 in the control group (2.6%).
Reduced risk of disease progression
When researchers looked at data from a further 280,000 people with glaucoma — including more than 30,000 who were taking statins and almost 250,000 who were not — they found the drugs also appeared to reduce the risk of the disease worsening.
At five years, statin use was associated with a 36% lower risk of incisional glaucoma surgery and a 55% reduced risk of minimally invasive glaucoma surgery (MIGS) — a keyhole procedure to lower the intraocular pressure in the eye.
Statins were also associated with a 60% lower risk of selective laser trabeculoplasty — a procedure that lowers intraocular pressure using laser pulses — and a 12% lower risk of needing eye drops to reduce intraocular pressure.
Observational findings and future research
Researchers, including Dr Robert Weinreb at the University of California, San Diego's Hamilton Glaucoma Centre, stressed that the findings were observational and therefore could not prove that statin use caused the reduced risk.
Writing in the British Journal of Ophthalmology, they said: “Our results suggest that statin use is associated with lower risk of glaucoma onset and treatment escalation. Prospective trials are needed to further elucidate the relationship between statin usage and glaucoma.”
An estimated eight million adults in the UK take statins. The daily pills are used to treat conditions including high cholesterol, angina, peripheral arterial disease and diabetes. They work by blocking an enzyme that the liver needs to produce cholesterol.
More than one million people in the UK are thought to live with glaucoma, according to a study published in the same medical journal earlier this year. Analysis by experts at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital found the number of sufferers was estimated to be almost 50% higher than previous estimates of around 700,000. They warned of a “demographic time bomb” that could see cases rise by 60% by 2060.
