Abdelrahman Elhusseiny, MD, of Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, talks about the affect of circadian dysregulation on intraocular pressure. He presents a study from AAO 2025 that found a link between sleep dysregulation and glaucoma.
Abdelrahman Elhusseiny, MD:
Hi, I’m Abdelrahman Elhusseiny from Bascom Palmer and the University of Arkansas. It’s a pleasure to present our work on the association between circadian rhythm, sleep disorders, and the risk of open-angle glaucoma and ocular hypertension.
There is growing evidence that circadian dysregulation can affect intraocular pressure, retina ganglion cell, and ocular perfusion, all of which are involved in glaucoma pathogenesis. Based on that, we conducted our retrospective, multicentric database study to evaluate such kind of association. We used TriNetX database including 68 healthcare organizations in the States, and we identified patients with circadian rhythm sleep disorders using ICD-10 code and compared them to matched controls for patients who had polysomnography and was not diagnosed with any sleep disorder.
After propensity score matching of baseline characteristics, including demographic factors, systemic comorbidities, and medications, we found that patients with circadian rhythm sleep disorder have significantly increased risk of open-angle glaucoma at 1, 3, and 5 years following the diagnosis of the sleep disorder. The increased risk was approximately about threefold.
Interestingly, that risk was confined only to patients who did not use melatonin. For patients who use melatonin, the risk was similar to that of the healthy controls. Regarding ocular hypertension, there was no significant difference between any of the groups at any time point in the risk of developing ocular hypertension.
In summary, our study showed that circadian dysregulation may be a risk factor for developing glaucoma and melatonin may be protective for these patients. Thank you.
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