Over 30% of Glaucoma Patients’ Relatives Also Vulnerable

Self-reporting by patients may not always be reliable because vision loss from other causes, such as AMD and diabetic retinopathy, may mistakenly be attributed to it.  Photo: Michael Chaglasian, OD. Click image to enlarge. According to a paper recently published in Ophthalmology Glaucoma, on average, over 30% of relatives of primary glaucoma patients “either have glaucoma or are diagnosed as suspects.” The 42 studies included in the paper were obtained via several databases, including Medline, Google Scholar and Web of Science, and filtered by key terms such as “primary open-angle glaucoma,” “primary angle closure disease” and “pigmentary glaucoma.” Findings revealed that the prevalence of glaucoma was higher among relatives of patients the more closely they were related—the median rate was 3.4% in children of patients, 31.6% in their parents and 16.2% in patients’ siblings.In addition to clarifying glaucoma’s presence among relatives, the researchers sought to understand how to increase response rates to screening programs made available to them because, as they explained in their paper, “studies have often reported poor response rates from family members.” They found that practitioners contacting relatives themselves through letters (which provided a median 74.6% response rate) or phone calls (48%) had a higher response output than having patients notify their relatives through “oral counselling of probands or issuing leaflets or cards to be given to their relatives," at only a 12.9% median response rate.Among the reviewed studies, nine (21.4%) were from India and seven (16.7%) were from the UK, with the remaining percentage coming from various countries including the US, Barbados, Iran and Denmark. A total of 21 of the studies were cross-sectional, 16 were prospective cohort studies and four were randomized controlled trials. The researchers noted that, in general, “studies have primarily focused on estimating the prevalence of glaucoma among family members by physically screening their relatives, and many have not evaluated the response rate, i.e., the proportion of the relatives who came for screening among those who were eligible or contacted.”Inaccurate self-reporting was a potential limitation acknowledged in the paper. “It has been noted,” wrote the researchers, “that one-fourth of patients may not provide reliable information about the family history of glaucoma” because of a misunderstanding of what the disease is and what symptoms it presents. They elaborated that “those who self-report a family history of glaucoma may attribute any blindness to glaucoma and may not, in fact, have glaucoma in their family.” The researchers suggested a solution: “contacting relatives of known glaucoma probands and screening them,” a strategy with higher accuracy and involved expertise than that of self-reports.Understanding glaucoma’s genetic factors is an important factor in preventing and managing the disease, particularly because, as explained in the study, “the presence of a positive family history in a first-degree relative is one of the strongest known risk factors for glaucoma.”Click here for the journal source. Odayappan A, Ehrlich JR, Berendschot TT, et al. Family screening in glaucoma: a scoping review. Ophthalmology Glaucoma. March 9, 2026. [Epub ahead of print].  This article was developed by the editorial staff in conjunction with experts in the field. In the process, AI may have been among the editorial tools used to meet the goals of human editors, who approved all content.