Abstract
The objective was to investigate different comorbidities developed in normal-tension glaucoma (NTG) and primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) patients. This was a case-control study, with 1489 people in the NTG group and 5120 people in the POAG group. Patient data were obtained from the Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2010 (LHID2010) of Taiwan for the 2008–2013 period. The chi-square test was used to compare categorical variables, such as gender, income and urbanisation level, between NTG and POAG patients, and the two-tailed t test was used to compare continuity between the two groups. We use a multivariate logic regression model to assess the risk of each participant. The results are expressed in terms of odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). Patients with NTG had significantly higher proportions of hypotension (adjusted OR, 1.984; 95% CI, 1.128–3.490), sleep disturbances (adjusted OR, 1.323; 95% CI, 1.146–1.528), peptic ulcers (adjusted OR, 1.383; 95% CI, 1.188–1.609) and allergic rhinitis (adjusted OR, 1.484; 95% CI, 1.290–1.707) than those with POAG. Conversely, arterial hypertension (adjusted OR, 0.767; 95% CI, 0.660–0.893), diabetes (adjusted OR, 0.850; 95% CI, 0.728–0.993) and atopic dermatitis (adjusted OR, 0.869; 95% CI, 0.763–0.990) had a lower risk in the NTG group than in the POAG group. We found that comorbidities such a hypotension, sleep disturbances and peptic ulcer and allergic rhinitis are more highly associated to NTG than POAG.
Highlights
Glaucoma is a disease that involves a progressive loss of retinal ganglion cells and causes irreversible blindness for people aged >60 years [1,2]
The data used in this study come from one of the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) data subsets, the Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2000 (LHID2000), which contains all claims data for 1 million representative beneficiaries randomly selected from the NHIRD from 2002 to 2013
The proportions of sleep disturbances, coronary heart disease, atrial fibrillation, headaches, migraines, peptic ulcers, malignant disease and allergic rhinitis were higher in normal-tension glaucoma (NTG) patients (29.62%, 19.01%, 1.95%, 30.76%, 4.1%, 24.71%, 8.8% and 28.95%, respectively) than in Primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) patients
Summary
Glaucoma is a disease that involves a progressive loss of retinal ganglion cells and causes irreversible blindness for people aged >60 years [1,2]. The elevation of intraocular pressure (IOP) that causes optic nerve damage and visual field loss is a major risk factor of glaucoma [3]. In 1857, Von Graefe described a different kind of glaucoma that had typical glaucomatous optic neuropathy, but the intraocular pressure (IOP) was normal or lower than normal. This special form of glaucoma is called the normal-tension glaucoma (NTG). NTG is a multifactorial optic neuropathy which is characterized by progressive retinal ganglion cell death and glaucomatous visual field loss, similar to POAG.
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