Investigators at Nihon University School of Pharmacy Have Reported New Data on Open-Angle Glaucoma (Comparison between high and low potency statins in the incidence of open-angle glaucoma: A retrospective cohort study in Japanese working-age …)

2020 AUG 31 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Investigators discuss new findings in Eye Diseases and Conditions - Open-Angle Glaucoma. According to news reporting out of Chiba, Japan, by NewsRx editors, research stated, “Some findings on the association between glaucoma and statins in the Asian population have been reported. We conducted a retrospective cohort study using health insurance claims data maintained by the JMDC Inc., which comprises data on about three million individuals representing 2.4% of the Japanese population.”

Financial support for this research came from JSPS KAKENHI.

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from the Nihon University School of Pharmacy, “The association between the potency of statins and open-angle glaucoma in Japanese working-age population was examined using a commercially available health insurance claims and enrollment database. We identified 117,036 patients with a prescription of statins between January 1, 2005 and March 31, 2014; 59,535 patients were selected as new statin users. Of these, 49,671 (83%) patients without glaucoma who were prescribed statins for the first time were part of the primary analysis. New users of statin were defined as those with a prescription of statin at the beginning of the study, but without a prescription six months earlier. The cohort comprised 29,435 (59%) and 20,236 (41%) patients with a prescription of high-potency statin (atorvastatin and rosuvastatin) and low-potency statin (pravastatin, fluvastatin, pitavastatin, and simvastatin), respectively. Using Cox proportional hazards regression analysis, hazard ratios (HRs) were estimated for glaucoma adjusted for baseline characteristics. Although some baseline characteristics were not similar between the high-potency and low-potency statin groups, the standardized difference for all covariates was less than 0.1. No associations were found between high-potency statin use and glaucoma (adjusted HR=1.08; 95% confidence interval, 0.93-1.24) in the primary analyses, using the risk for glaucoma in the low-potency statin group as reference. The risk of glaucoma with individual statin use was not significantly different from that with pravastatin. No significant association was found between high-potency statins and the increased risk of glaucoma in Japanese working-age population.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Further studies are needed to examine the association between statins and glaucoma in the elderly population.”

For more information on this research see: Comparison between high and low potency statins in the incidence of open-angle glaucoma: A retrospective cohort study in Japanese working-age population. Plos One, 2020;15(8):e0237617. (Public Library of Science - www.plos.org; Plos One - www.plosone.org)

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Rira Iwahashi, Dept. of Clinical Pharmacy, Nihon University School of Pharmacy, Chiba, Japan. Additional authors for this research include Nobuhiro Ooba, Akiko Nogami, Toshimitsu Nakayama, Atsushi Kanno, Naohiro Tochikura, Susumu Ootsuka and Noriyasu Fukuoka.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237617. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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