Intraocular pressure is significantly associated with sub-clinical atherosclerosis. Healio reports that this is according to Sungmin Ye and colleagues at the Sungkyunkwan University, School of Medicine, in Seoul, Korea who conducted a cross-sectional study of 10,723 asymptomatic participants to evaluate the relationship between IOP and coronary artery calcification.
Researchers utilised a non-contact tonometer and automatic air puff control to measure IOP and cardiac CT to measure coronary artery calcium. Results showed that, after adjusting for extraneous variables, increased prevalence of coronary artery calcium was significantly associated with increasing levels of IOP.
"It is presumed that the increased risk of coronary artery calcium status and distribution of higher IOP have a co-existing patho-physiology," the authors wrote. "There is a possibility that high blood pressure would play an important role in both increased IOP and coronary artery calcium."
"Elevated blood pressure, an established risk factor for cardiovascular disease, has been reported to be associated with elevated IOP levels," the researchers continued. "In our study, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure and hypertension status were positively correlated with higher quartile distribution of IOP. It has been inferred that high blood pressure contributes to the elevation of ciliary artery pressure in the eye, increasing the ultrafiltration and production of aqueous humour. This mechanism has been postulated as the cause of elevated IOP."
[link url="http://www.healio.com/optometry/glaucoma/news/online/%7B82faad43-fbe6-4ae4-b1e6-b3e8763d0bc5%7D/presence-of-coronary-artery-calcification-associated-with-higher-iop"]Full Healio report[/link]
[link url="http://bjo.bmj.com/content/early/2015/01/12/bjophthalmol-2014-305925.abstract?sid=ead5112b-2bf9-4d32-84cc-ba1b7cd13084"]British Journal of Ophthalmology abstract[/link]