Robert Weinreb of the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues conducted a retrospective cohort study and found that both elevated blood pressure and its long-term variability are associated with accelerated glaucoma progression. The analysis included 1,674 eyes of 985 patients (mean age 61.2 years; 57.2 percent women) with suspected or confirmed glaucoma from two longitudinal studies from November 2000 to December 2022. All patients had their blood pressure and visual field measured over a median period of eight years. The results were published in JAMA Ophthalmology.
The average rate of change in the mean visual field deviation over the observation period was -0.13 decibels per year. An increase in both mean and diastolic blood pressure per millimeter of mercury was associated with an acceleration of this process by 0.02 (p = 0.001) and 0.02 (p < 0.001) decibels per year, respectively. A similar correlation was observed with blood pressure variability: an increase in its mean deviation per millimeter of mercury for mean and diastolic pressure was associated with an acceleration of changes in the mean deviation by 0.01 (p = 0.003) and 0.01 (p = 0.001) decibels per year, respectively.
