Association of Systemic Hypertension With Primary Open-angle Glaucoma: A Population-based Case-Control Study

Purpose: To examine the association between systemic hypertension (HTN) and primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) using Taiwan's nationwide health insurance claims data. Design: A case-control study. Methods: Data for this case-control study were retrieved from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database for all 112,929 newly diagnosed patients with POAG from January 2010 through December 2015 (cases), and 449,840 propensity score-matched controls from Taiwan's National Health Insurance system. We performed multiple logistic regression analysis to estimate the odds (ORs) of prior HTN among cases vs controls. Results: Of total 562,300 study patients, 296,975 (52.81%) had HTN prior to the index date, 63,528 (56.49%) among cases and 233,447 (51.90%) among controls (P < .001). POAG was significantly associated with prior HTN (OR 1.31, 95% CI 1.29-1.33) after adjusting for age, sex, monthly income, geographic location and residential urbanization level, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, coronary heart disease, migraine, hypotension, and obstructive sleep apnea syndrome. Conclusions: POAG is associated with pre-existing HTN, suggesting that internal medicine/family medicine physicians should refer patients with hypertension periodically for regular ophthalmological examinations and ophthalmologists should alert patients with glaucoma to have their blood pressure regularly monitored.