Glaucoma is one of the leading causes of blindness around the world. It is a long-term eye disease that slowly damages the optic nerve, the bundle of nerve fibers that carries visual information from the eye to the brain.
This damage usually happens over many years and often develops without pain or early warning signs.
Many people do not realize they have glaucoma until they begin losing their vision. Once vision is lost, it cannot be restored, making early diagnosis and treatment extremely important.
In many people, glaucoma is linked to high pressure inside the eye.
This pressure can gradually injure the optic nerve and lead to permanent vision loss if left untreated. Current treatments mainly focus on lowering eye pressure through prescription eye drops, laser treatment, or surgery.
While these treatments can slow the disease, they do not work equally well for everyone. Some patients continue to lose vision even when their eye pressure is well controlled, suggesting that other processes also play a role.
Researchers have been searching for new ways to protect the optic nerve directly. A new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden offers an encouraging possibility. The research, published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, suggests that a combination of common vitamins may help slow or even stop damage to the optic nerve by improving how the retina produces and uses energy.
The research began with a question about homocysteine, a natural substance made during normal metabolism. High homocysteine levels have previously been linked to heart disease, stroke, and several other health conditions. Some scientists had also suspected it might contribute to glaucoma.
To investigate, the researchers carried out experiments in both animals and humans. They increased homocysteine levels in rats with glaucoma to see whether the disease became worse. Surprisingly, it did not. They also studied people with glaucoma and found that those with higher homocysteine levels did not experience faster disease progression. In addition, people who were genetically more likely to have high homocysteine levels were not at greater risk of developing glaucoma.
These findings suggested that homocysteine is probably not causing glaucoma. Instead, it appears to be a sign that something else has already gone wrong inside the eye. According to the researchers, homocysteine is more like a bystander than the driving force behind the disease.
The team then looked more closely at metabolism inside the retina, the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. They found that glaucoma affected the retina’s ability to use certain vitamins efficiently. This slowed important metabolic processes that help keep nerve cells healthy and functioning normally.
Because of this discovery, the researchers tested whether providing extra vitamins could improve retinal metabolism and protect the optic nerve. They gave laboratory mice and rats with glaucoma a combination of vitamin B6, vitamin B9, also known as folic acid, vitamin B12, and choline.
The results were impressive. In mice with a slower form of glaucoma, the vitamin combination completely stopped further optic nerve damage during the study period. In rats with a faster-progressing form of glaucoma, the treatment significantly slowed the damage.
One of the most interesting findings was that the vitamins worked without lowering pressure inside the eye. This suggests the treatment may protect the optic nerve through a completely different pathway from current glaucoma therapies. If confirmed in people, the vitamins could become an additional treatment used alongside standard eye-pressure-lowering therapies.
James Tribble, assistant professor at Karolinska Institutet and co-lead author of the study, said the results suggest that changes in homocysteine reflect problems with vitamin use inside the retina rather than causing the disease itself. Improving retinal metabolism may therefore help keep optic nerve cells healthier for longer.
The encouraging animal results have already led to a clinical trial. Researchers at St. Erik Eye Hospital in Stockholm are now testing the vitamin treatment in people with primary open-angle glaucoma and pseudoexfoliation glaucoma. The study will determine whether the same protective effects seen in animals also occur in human patients.
Although more research is needed before the vitamin combination can become a standard treatment, the findings offer new hope. If the clinical trial is successful, a simple and widely available group of vitamins may one day help slow vision loss in millions of people living with glaucoma.
The research was published in Cell Reports Medicine.
If you care about nutrition, please read studies about foods that could improve survival in Parkinson’s disease, and vitamin D supplements strongly reduce cancer death.
For more health information, please see recent studies about plant nutrient that could help reduce high blood pressure, and these antioxidants could help reduce dementia risk.
Copyright © 2026 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
