Persons with chronic high blood pressure were at increased risk of developing glaucoma, discovered scientists.

These results suggest that doctors should consider a patient's blood pressure levels in managing the potentially blinding eye disorder.
Data gathered from large populations of glaucoma patients subsequently suggested that hypertension in young patients protects against the disorder, but is a risk factor in older patients.
One explanation of this phenomenon is that any benefit from high blood pressure counteracting high eye pressure is lost as damage to blood vessels - a consequence of hypertension - becomes more prevalent.
The authors tested this hypothesis by comparing the effect of acute (one hour) and chronic (four week) hypertension in lab rats with elevated eye pressure.
When they raised blood pressure for four weeks, the researchers didn't get the same protection against eye pressure elevation as in the [one hour] case, said author Bang Bui, PhD, of the University of Melbourne, Australia. This meant that having high blood pressure for a longer time had compromised the eye's capacity to cope with high eye pressure. It seemed that hypertension might damage the blood vessels in the eye so that they couldn't compensate for changes in blood flow when eye pressure increases.
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The study is published in Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science (IOVS).
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