April 24, 2024

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Drinking too much coffee may cause blindness

Drinking too much coffee may cause blindness, beware of the “cancer” in eye disease stealing your vision

Drinking too much coffee may cause blindness.  Glaucoma is a group of diseases characterized by atrophy and depression of the optic nipple, visual field defect, and decreased vision. It is called a “silent killer”.

Its main characteristics are rapid onset, great harm, and blindness in humans. One of the three major blindness diseases. What’s more frightening is that glaucoma is irreversible and will steal our eyesight unknowingly. It is often compared to “cancer” in eye diseases. Therefore, strengthening prevention is particularly important.

Recently, researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in the United States published an article titled “Intraocular Pressure, Glaucoma, and Dietary Caffeine Consumption A Gene–Diet Interaction Study from the UK Biobank” in Ophthalmology, the top issue of Ophthalmology. For the first time, the relationship between the eating habits and genetics of glaucoma patients has been proved.

Studies have pointed out that people with a family history of glaucoma who consume large amounts of caffeine every day may increase the risk of glaucoma by more than three times.

This study performed data analysis on the genetic samples of 121,347 participants in the UK BioBank, the world’s most comprehensive large-scale human information resource bank so far, and measured their intraocular pressure (IOP). At the same time, a dietary questionnaire survey was conducted on 77,906 participants to achieve a strong assessment of the link between caffeine intake, intraocular pressure and glaucoma.

The results showed that excessive caffeine intake was not associated with increased overall intraocular pressure or increased risk of glaucoma. In contrast, those participants with higher intraocular pressure and a stronger genetic predisposition had higher caffeine intake, increased intraocular pressure and higher risk of glaucoma. Relevant data showed that for every 4 cups of coffee they drank , The intraocular pressure will be 0.35 mm Hg higher.

So, how to avoid the incidence of blindness?

Since the occurrence of complex diseases is often controlled by multiple genetic loci, it is an assessment tool that quantifies the susceptibility of individuals to diseases by calculating multiple susceptibility sites based on individual genetic variation, “polygenic risk score” (PRS)” stands out as the most commonly used strategy for accurately predicting diseases.

In this latest study, researchers used the assessment tool to combine 111 genetic variants related to intraocular pressure to analyze the association between genes and caffeine intake. However, with the deepening of medical research, the research on relevance has begun to be criticized. The biggest slot is that relevance does not equal causation. Therefore, in order to avoid “false associations”, the researchers conducted a Mendelian randomization analysis based on 8 genetic variant genes related to caffeine intake to assess the potential causal effect of caffeine intake on intraocular pressure.

The study found that compared with people with low caffeine intake and low genetic risk scores, people with higher genetic risk scores and daily intake of caffeine content of more than 321 mg (equivalent to 3 cups of coffee) have glaucoma The prevalence is 3.9 times higher.

Anthony Khawaja, MD, associate professor of ophthalmology at University College London, one of the authors of the report, said: “Although it is still unknown whether the blinding disease glaucoma can reduce the risk by changing people’s lifestyles, this latest research has already helped us It has shown a clear path that people with a high genetic risk of glaucoma may benefit by reducing caffeine intake.”

In short, in the future, we must always be vigilant against “vision killer” glaucoma, continue to explore new methods to treat this disease, and bring more hope to patients.

(source:internet, reference only)


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