Wiping out ulcer bug may help glaucoma patients

June 12, 2002

Last Updated: 2002-06-11 17:00:03 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Rauscher

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study by Greek researchers shows that many

patients with glaucoma are infected with the ulcer-causing bacterium

Helicobacter pylori, and that treating the infection improved their vision.

The findings suggest that eradicating H. pylori could help patients with

glaucoma, suggesting for the first time that the bacteria might play a role

in the eye disease, lead investigator Dr. Jannis Kountouras, from Aristotle

University of Thessaloniki in Macedonia, told Reuters Health.

Glaucoma is a group of diseases in which increased pressure within the

eyeball gradually damages the optic nerve, leading to vision loss and, in

some cases, blindness.

In the Archives of Internal Medicine for June 10, Kountouras and colleagues

report that they detected H. pylori in 88% of 41 glaucoma patients and in

47% of 30 age-matched " controls " without the disease. They gave all the

patients with H. pylori a stomach-acid suppressing drug in addition to the

antibiotics clarithromycin and amoxicillin to get rid of the bug. They

followed all of the study participants for 2 years.

At the end of the study, average pressure within the eye and the average

size of patients' visual field had improved only in the glaucoma patients

whose H. pylori had been successfully eradicated.

" From (the) clinical point of view, associating H. pylori and glaucoma and

proving the benefit of eradicating H. pylori in the clinical course of the

glaucoma disease may have a major impact on treatment, " said Kountouras.

In their paper, he and his colleagues discuss several possible mechanisms by

which H. pylori might contribute to glaucoma. They suggest that activation

and aggregation of platelets, cells in blood that are essential for

clotting, may be a factor. The release of inflammation-promoting chemicals

already implicated in several types of blood vessel disease could also

underlie the association, they suggest.

SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine 2002;162:1237-1244.

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