Exposure to Statins Not Related to Increased Risk of OAG

Exposure to statins for less than 2 years was not associated with an increased risk of open-angle glaucoma (OAG) in the Japanese working-age population diagnosed with dyslipidemia, according to a study published in Scientific Reports.

Glaucoma is an eye condition that can narrow the visual field and can cause irreversible blindness. OAG is the most common form of glaucoma and is a subset of primary glaucoma. This study aimed to assess the relationship between statins and OAG in working-age patients in Japan who are also diagnosed with dyslipidemia.

The researchers used the Japan Medical Data Center database, which is a large and chronically organized claims database and includes about 14 million insured individuals in Japan who registered in the database. The researchers used a nested case-control study that used data from January 2005 to January 2020. Patients who were newly diagnosed with dyslipidemia and included in the database for at least 6 months were identified. Patients were excluded if they were younger than 20 years of age, who were diagnosed with OAG before their first diagnosis of dyslipidemia, and patients who did not have a minimum of 12 or 24 months in the database.

All cases were matched to 10 controls by age, sex, and calendar date of first diagnosis of dyslipidemia. Onset of OAG in patients with dyslipidemia was the outcome of the study.

There were 6180 cases and 61,792 controls included in the study for model 1 and 4153 cases and 41,522 controls for model 2. There were approximately 60% male patients and the median age was 51 years, with the median (IQR) observation period after diagnosis of dyslipidemia being 32 (20-53) months in model 1 and 45 (32-64) months in model 2. Statins were prescribed at least once to about half of patients diagnosed with dyslipidemia.

A conditional logistic regression analysis found that statin use in Q1 exposure was not a risk factor in either model (model 1: adjusted OR [aOR], 0.98; 95% CI, 0.93-1.03. model 2: aOR, 0.97; 95% CI, 0.91-1.04). Q2 exposure of statin use was also not a risk factor in either model (model 1: aOR, 1.03; 95% CI, 0.97-1.09. model 2: aOR, 1.01; 95% CI, 0.94-1.09).

There were some limitations to this study. The Japan Medical Data Center database is based in social insurance enrollees in the working-age population of Japan, which left those aged 75 years and older out of the study. The exposure assessment period may have been too short at 24 months. OAG is also associated with ocular features that were not included in the database, such as family history and intraocular pressure. There may have been selection bias due to patients who were diagnosed with dyslipidemia more than once being included in the final sample.

The researchers concluded that there was no significant association between the onset of OAG and the use of statins for less than 2 years in the working-age population of Japan who were also diagnosed with dyslipidemia.

Reference

Yokoyama S, Nakagawa C, Hosomi K. Association between statin use and open-angle glaucoma: a nested case-control study using the Japanese claims database. Sci Rep. 2023;13:11677. doi:10.1038/s41598-023-38957-2