Primary Open-angle Glaucoma and Increased Risk of Chronic Kidney Disease.

PRECIS

The association between primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) and subsequent development of chronic kidney disease (CKD) was investigated using a nationwide, population-based, retrospective cohort in South Korea. POAG increases the risk of subsequent CKD development.

PURPOSE

The purpose of this study was to investigate the risk of subsequent CKD development in patients with POAG.

METHODS

In this nationwide, population-based longitudinal cohort, 1,025,340 beneficiaries in the 2002-2013 Korean National Health Insurance database were included. We identified patients with incident POAG and evaluated the risk of subsequent CKD development using diagnostic codes from the database after 2-year wash-out periods. We applied time-varying covariate Cox regression analyses to determine the effect of POAG on the development of

CKD

Model 1 included only POAG as a time-varying covariate; Model 2 included Model 1 and demographic information; and Model 3 included Model 2, comorbidity, comedication, and the Charlson Comorbidity Index score.

RESULTS

The fixed cohort included 478,303 eligible subjects, and of these subjects, 1749 suffered incident POAG, and 3157 developed CKD. POAG was associated with an increased risk of CKD development [hazard ratio (HR)=7.63; 95% confidence interval (CI), 5.89-9.87] in Model 1; HR=3.54 (95% CI, 2.73-4.58) in Model 2; and HR=2.90 (95% CI, 2.24-3.76) in Model 3].

CONCLUSION

POAG increased the risk of subsequent CKD in the general population, suggesting that POAG and CKD might share a common pathogenic mechanism.