Glaucoma, often called the “silent thief of sight,” is because it damages the eyes slowly without causing pain or giving warning signs.
This damages the optic nerve, which is the part of your eye that sends information about everything you see to the brain. If left untreated, glaucoma can slowly lead to blindness.
Most of the time, glaucoma is caused by high pressure inside the eye, but there is also a rare form called normal tension glaucoma.
In this type, the pressure in the eye is normal, but the optic nerve is still damaged.
We are now tackling a serious health problem: Alzheimer’s disease, which affects the brain and causes memory loss, confusion and changes in behavior. As the condition worsens, people with Alzheimer’s disease may even forget how to complete daily tasks.
These two diseases, glaucoma and Alzheimer’s disease, can seem very different since one affects the eyes and the other the brain. But a group of Taiwanese scientists studied to see if they could be connected.
In a large study, researchers looked at the medical records of more than 15,000 people with normal tension glaucoma and compared those people to more than 61,000 people without glaucoma.
Their health was monitored for 12 years.
The results were surprising since people with normal tension glaucoma were 52% more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than people without glaucoma.
The risk was particularly high in people who had already suffered a stroke or in older women. Even people who took medication for their glaucoma still had a higher risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr. Yu-Yen Chen, who led the study, said people with normal-tension glaucoma should also be screened for signs of Alzheimer’s disease.
Detecting the disease early could help them get the care and support they need more quickly.
