Acute closed angle glaucoma and sunshine.

STUDY OBJECTIVE

The aim was to examine a possible association of amount of sunshine and risk for acute closed angle glaucoma.

DESIGN

This was a retrospective analysis of hospital discharge registry data, linked to meteorological data for the same period.

SETTING

The study was a national survey using hospital discharge data for the whole of Finland over a 10 year period.

PARTICIPANTS

All subjects with the acute closed angle glaucoma diagnosis from the hospital discharge registry were collected for the years 1972 to 1982. A total of 1796 patients were found.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS

Meteorological data from two cities in Finland, Helsinki and Oulu, were collected for the same years from the Finnish Meteorological Institute. A peak incidence of acute closed angle glaucoma was noted whenever the number of hours without sunshine increased. A regression analysis including incidence of acute closed angle glaucoma as a dependent variable, and sex, mean temperature, mean air pressure, mean humidity, total amount of rain per month, and mean sunshine hours as independent variables, was constructed. Sex and sunshine hours best explained the variation in incidence in a covariate model. No other meteorological variate could improve the model fit.

CONCLUSIONS

The result confirms that the number of hours without sunshine is positively associated with the incidence of acute closed angle glaucoma, when other meteorological variables are controlled for.