(Image source from: Hypertension causes Glaucoma})

Glaucoma is the second most cause of blindness in the world, it occurs when too much pressure builds up inside the eye. The researchers found that Chronic or Long-term Blood Pressure can cause this condition.

Hypertension (high BP) pushes back the blood trying to enter the eye and leads to vision loss. Hypertension is the main cause for the Cardio Vascular diseases. Now this high BP is also proved to be a factor of Glaucoma condition.

"It seems that hypertension might damage the blood vessels in the eye so that they cannot compensate for changes in blood flow when eye pressure increases," said author Bang Bui from the University of Melbourne in Australia.

The latest studies giving the results contradicting to the previous findings, earlier it is believed that hypertension could counter the blockage of pressure in the eye, now it found that High BP can catalyze the blindness.

The studies on rats resulted that acute (short term) hypertension won’t cause this glaucoma condition, but the chronic (or long term) hypertension can show impact in the pressure and causes the glaucoma.

"When we raised blood pressure... for four weeks, we did not get the same protection against eye pressure elevation as in the (one hour) case," Bui quoted.

"What this means is that having high blood pressure for a longer time has compromised the eye's capacity to cope with high eye pressure," Bui added.

Acute time period is referred to one hour and chronic is for four weeks. This study was appeared in ‘Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences (IVOS).

AW: Kannamsai