Sibling With Glaucoma Means You're Also At Risk

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Brothers and sisters of patients with glaucoma have about a 20 percent chance of having developed the disease by the time they reach age 70, according to results of the Nottingham Family Glaucoma Screening Study.

"That's about five times the risk of the whole population at a similar age," Stephen A Vernon from University Hospital in Nottingham told Reuters Health.

In the initial phase of the study, 271 siblings of 156 glaucoma patients underwent standard ophthalmic examinations between 1994 and 2003. Thirty two siblings (nearly 12 percent) were classified as having definite glaucoma and 15 (roughly 5 percent) were classified as having suspected glaucoma, Vernon and colleagues report in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.

In a follow up phase, 157 of the 224 siblings with normal eyesight were reexamined an average of 7 years from the initial exam, at which time 11 (7 percent) were classified as having definite glaucoma and 30 (19 percent) as having suspected glaucoma.

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