Losing eyesight is one of the greatest fears many people have as they grow older. One disease that can quietly steal vision is glaucoma. It often causes no pain and no early warning signs.
As the disease slowly damages the optic nerve, vision becomes narrower until permanent blindness may occur. Because the damage cannot be reversed, finding glaucoma early is extremely important.
Scientists have now discovered that a person’s DNA may help predict glaucoma long before any symptoms begin. Their study, published in Ophthalmology, analyzed information from the FinnGen project, which includes genetic and health records from hundreds of thousands of people in Finland.
More than 21,000 participants had glaucoma, giving researchers one of the largest collections of glaucoma data ever studied.
The researchers calculated a polygenic risk score for every participant. Unlike tests that focus on one gene, this score combines the tiny effects of many genetic variants linked to glaucoma. Together, these small genetic differences provide an overall estimate of a person’s inherited risk.
The findings showed that genetic risk varies greatly. Almost one out of every two people with scores in the highest one percent developed glaucoma during their lives.
By comparison, fewer than three out of one hundred people in the lowest one percent developed the disease. This means the genetic score was able to separate people into groups with very different levels of lifetime risk.
The score also predicted how difficult glaucoma would be to treat. People with higher genetic risk were more likely to need additional eye drops, laser procedures, and surgery after diagnosis. This suggests that genetics may help doctors predict not only who will develop glaucoma but also who may develop more severe disease.
Dr. Joni Turunen from the University of Helsinki said these results show that genetic information may identify people at high risk decades before glaucoma appears. Earlier identification would allow doctors to monitor these individuals more closely and begin treatment before permanent vision loss occurs.
The study also compared genetic risk scores with family history. Family history has long been used to estimate inherited risk, but the researchers found that the genetic score performed much better. Nina Mars explained that combining information from many genes creates a much more complete picture than family history alone.
The researchers hope future healthcare systems may use genetic testing to guide personalized eye screening. Instead of treating everyone the same, doctors could focus resources on people with the greatest inherited risk while still providing appropriate care for everyone else.
More research is still needed before this approach becomes routine. Scientists must determine whether genetic screening is affordable, practical, and equally accurate in different ethnic groups around the world.
Overall, this research represents an important advance in personalized medicine. The study’s strengths include its very large sample size and its ability to examine both glaucoma risk and disease severity.
However, because it mainly involved Finnish participants, additional international studies will be needed. The findings are promising and suggest that combining genetic testing with regular eye examinations could help prevent blindness by finding glaucoma much earlier than current methods alone.
If you care about eye health, please read studies about how vitamin B may help fight vision loss, and MIND diet may reduce risk of vision loss disease.
For more information about eye disease, please see recent studies about how to protect your eyes from glaucoma, and results showing this eye surgery may reduce dementia risk.
Source: University of Helsinki.
