The results of a large study indicate that poor sleep disorders such as excessive or not enough sleep, snoring and daytime sleepiness could be associated with a higher risk of a irreversible visual loss known than glaucoma.
The results emphasize the need for sleep therapy for people with a high risk of the disease in addition to eye tests for people with long -term sleep problems in order to monitor early signs of glaucoma.
Glaucoma is a main cause of blindness, which will probably have around 112 million people worldwide by 2040.
Characterized by the progressive loss of eye cells that are sensitive to light and optic nerve damage, the causes and factors that contribute to glaucoma are still not well understood. However, if you remain untreated, the disease can lead to blindness that is irreversible.
While the screening at the population level may not be inexpensive, the focused screening of groups could be high. And other studies suggest that sleep disorders could be a significant risk factor.
In order to examine these topics more detailed, the researchers carried out a study to determine the glaucoma risk of people with different sleeping behavior: insomnia; excess or not enough sleep; Owl (night) or lark (tomorrow) chronotypes; Snoring; and daytime sleepiness.
They used data from 409,053 people who took part in the British Bio Cank, who were between 40 and 69 years old between 2006 and 2010 when they registered and specified the details of sleep behavior.
The sleeping time of 7 to less than 9 hours a day was as normal and outside of this area as not enough or excessively identified. Based on whether the person was identified as an owl or lark, the chronotype was classified.
The severity of insomnia, the difficulty of falling asleep or frequently waking up at night was classified as sometimes/never or normally, while daily sleepiness was classified as never/rarely, occasionally or frequently.
Background information on factors that could possibly influence the results were collected from the questionnaires that were filled out during the registration: lifestyle, age (average 57), breed/ethnic belonging, gender, BMI, education processes and deprivation of the residential area.
The data of the death registration and the medical documents were used to persecute the survival and health of all people until a 1st glaucoma diagnosis, emigration, death or at the beginning of the surveillance period, depending on what became first place.
During a surveillance period of only 10.5 years on average, 8690 glaucoma was diagnosed.
People with glaucoma were rather smokers, older and male and had diabetes or high blood pressure compared to people who were not identified as a disease.
The other 4 sleep patterns/behaviors were all associated with different glaucoma risk with the exception of the chronotypes.
A long or short sleep duration was 8% connected to a risk increase. Insomnia is a risk increase of 12%; Snoring of a risk of 4%; And frequent daily slansiness a risk increase by 20%.
Snor and individuals with sleepy during the day had a 10% higher probability of having glaucoma compared to people with a healthy sleep pattern, while people with a long/short sleep pattern and insomnia had a 13% higher chance of having it.
Similar results were observed in the categorized categorization of different types of glaucoma.
Since this was an observation study, the cause could not be determined. The study depended on self -reporting instead of objective measurements and only reflected one time of the time. Even the sleeping patterns can influence glaucoma instead of the other way round.
However, there are potentially credible explanations for sleep disorder and glaucoma association. The inner pressure of the eye, an important factor for glaucoma development, increases when the sleep hormones get out of balance and lie down in the individual of the individual.
Fear and depression, which are often related to insomnia, could also increase the inner pressure of the eye, possibly due to dysregulated cortisol production.
It was also suspected that longer or repeating episodes with low cellular oxygen levels due to sleep apnea could lead to the optic nerve being damaged.
Since the sleeping behavior can be modified, these results emphasize the need for sleep treatment for people with a high glaucomal risk and potential ophthalmological screening in people with long -term sleep problems to prevent glaucoma.
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