Glaucoma: Coffee increases the risk for those with previous exposure
Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001.In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.
More posts by Christiane Fux All content is checked by medical journalists.Anyone who has close relatives who suffer from glaucoma (green star) should hold back on coffee. Just three cups a day could almost quadruple the risk of increased intraocular pressure leading to blindness.
Green star (glaucoma) is the leading cause of blindness in industrialized countries. A recent study examined the effects of caffeine intake on intraocular pressure, which is a central risk factor for the development of glaucoma.
Three cups of coffee, four times the risk
Researchers led by Louis R. Pasquale from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine evaluated data from more than 120,000 participants who were between 39 and 73 years old. They answered questions about their caffeine consumption based on energy drinks, cola and coffee.
In addition, the genome of the participants was examined for risk genes for glaucoma. The participants' eyesight was examined three years after the survey. The result: People with a familial risk of glaucoma increased the likelihood of caffeine consumption actually developing one.
Increased risk only for those with a family history
For participants who had a particularly high genetic predisposition to the occurrence of glaucoma and who drank more than three cups of coffee a day (or more than 321 milligrams of caffeine), the risk of glaucoma was almost four times higher than for people with a genetically low risk of glaucoma who had little or no did not consume caffeine.
Such a genetic predisposition is not uncommon: it affected 25 percent of the participants. In the remaining 75 percent, the researchers also found that intraocular pressure rose by an average of 0.35 mmHg when consuming high levels of caffeine. However, they could not find a direct connection with the development of glaucoma.
"The study suggests that people at the highest genetic risk for glaucoma could benefit from moderate caffeine intake," says co-author Anthony Khawaja. However, the association between caffeine and the risk of glaucoma has only been established in large amounts of caffeine for people with the highest genetic risk.
Intraocular hypertension causes blindness
The medical term glaucoma, or glaucoma, includes a group of eye diseases that, if left untreated, can destroy the retina and optic nerve over time. The disease is not painful and often goes unnoticed. So-called visual field losses usually only occur at an advanced stage: A blind spot then lies in part of the visual spectrum. If left untreated, the failures progress to complete blindness. 15 to 20 percent of all blindness in Germany can be traced back to such a glaucoma.
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