Abstract
Purpose :
Glaucoma is a leading cause of irreversible blindness, affecting more than 70 million people worldwide. Primary open angle glaucoma (POAG) is the most common form of glaucoma. Racial differences in POAG have been observed, with Latinos experiencing higher risk of POAG compared to individuals of European descent. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between genetic ancestry and POAG in a Latino population.
Methods :
We conducted a population-based association study using 4,015 Latinos recruited from the Los Angeles Latino Eye Study (LALES). Study participants were genotyped using either the Illumina OmniExpress BeadChip (~730K markers) or the Illumina Hispanic/SOL BeadChip (~2.5 million markers) through LALES and the Mexican American Glaucoma Genetic Study (MAGGS). All study subjects were 40 years of age or older. We estimated individual genetic ancestry using the program STRUCTURE. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine the association between genetic ancestry and POAG.
Results :
European ancestry was significantly associated with lower risk of POAG after adjusting for age, gender, central corneal thickness, and intraocular pressure (P = 0.004). This association was modified by a significant interaction between European ancestry and income (P = 0.007), with individuals in the highest income category experiencing the lowest risk of POAG with increasing European ancestry.
Conclusions :
To our knowledge, our results demonstrate for the first time that European ancestry and its interaction with income are significantly associated with lower risk of POAG in Latinos.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2017 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, May 7-11, 2017.