Abstract

Purpose: Observational studies have suggested that individuals with pre-existing sleep apnea (SA) have up to double the risk of developing glaucoma than individuals without SA. Understanding risk factors for glaucoma is important to assist with well-structured screening, early intervention, and efficient allocation of specialist consultation. The objective of this study is therefore to use genetic data to determine whether SA is a causal risk factor for glaucoma. Methods: Two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses were performed to assess the association between genetically predicted SA and glaucoma susceptibility using genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 25,062 SA cases, 313,372 controls derived from 23andMe and summary data from a glaucoma GWAS meta-analysis (20,582 cases, 119,318 controls), including individuals of European descent, mainly from the UK Biobank. Results: Inverse variance weighted regression of genetic susceptibility for SA on risk of glaucoma revealed no strong evidence for an association between SA and glaucoma (OR = 0.95, 95% confidence intervals = 0.84-1.07), results were consistent across all MR predictors. Conclusions: We found little genetic evidence supporting a causal association between SA and glaucoma. Our results refute the possibility of a large effect (glaucoma OR > 1.5 per doubling of odds on SA) between SA and glaucoma.

Authors	Ingold, Nathan; Campos, Adrian I; Han, Xikun; Ong, Jue-Sheng; Gharahkhani, Puya; Mackey, David A; Rentería, Miguel E; Law, Matthew H; MacGregor, Stuart
Journal	INVESTIGATIVE OPHTHALMOLOGY & VISUAL SCIENCE
Pages	25
Volume	63
Date	1/01/2022
Grant ID
Funding Body
URL	http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=10.1167/iovs.63.1.25