Open-angle glaucoma (OAG) patients with diabetes appear to have different glaucoma characteristics than those with OAG alone, a new study reports.

The investigation included 64 OAG patients with Type 2 diabetes, 68 OAG-only patients and 36 subjects in the control group. Investigators tested all patients with spectral-domain optical coherence tomography.

Researcher found visual field defects in OAG and diabetes patients were more commonly located in the inferior hemifield and tended to involve the central visual field compared with the glaucoma subjects without diabetes. Additionally, researchers reported prelaminar thickness was highest in the OAG-diabetes group, followed by the control subjects and the glaucoma patients without diabetes. In follow-up testing, researchers found prelaminar thickness was significantly higher in the OAG-diabetes group than glaucoma-only participants. The lamina cribrosa depth was also found to be deepest in OAG diabetes patients.

“Diabetic and non-diabetic OAG patients exhibit different characteristics of glaucoma, particularly increased prelaminar thickening” in patients experiencing both glaucoma and diabetes, the researchers noted in their paper.

Sim YS, Kwon JW, Jee D, et al. Increased prelaminar tissue thickness in patients with open-angle glaucoma and type 2 diabetes. PLoS One. 2019;14(2):e0211641.