According to one study, age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma may precede Alzheimer’s.
People suffering from these diseases do not have to develop Alzheimer’s . Not much less. But according to a study by the School of Medicine at the University of Washington, the School of Nursing at the university and the Kaiser Permanente Health Institute in Washington, there may be links between three eye diseases and Alzheimer’s .
In this way, age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma may precede the onset of Alzheimer’s . ” We do not mean that people with these eye conditions will have Alzheimer’s disease .” The main message of this study is that ophthalmologists should be more aware of the risks of developing dementia for people with these eye conditions and primary care physicians than They treat patients with these eye conditions could be more careful to control for dementia or memory loss, “said lead researcher Cecilia Lee, professor of ophthalmology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Washington.
Study published in ‘Alzheimer’s & Dementia’
The research, published in the journal ‘Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association’ , includes the study of 3,877 patients older than 65 who did not have any Alzheimer’s symptoms. After 5 years of scrupulous analysis, 792 patients developed the disease .
The patients with macular degeneration related to age, diabetic retinopathy or glaucoma were between 40 and 50 percent higher risk of Alzheimer’s compared to the rest that did not suffer any of these eye afeccioines . It was also clear, on the other hand, that the diagnosis of cataracts was not a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease.
Thus, a new avenue of research is opened that may imply an earlier diagnosis of the disease and better treatments, although, as always, it is necessary to go deeper into the study of the eye as an extension of the central nervous system since what happens in it It can be connected to what happens in the brain .
