Our eyes are just like the rest of the body. A new study shows how stress can speed up the aging process, a discovery that could help us treat eye problems that develop as we get older, including the group of diseases responsible for vision loss.
The team believes that the same principles are likely to apply to human eyes as well.
A rise in intraocular pressure, also known as ocular hypertension, is one of the consequences of psychological stress. It is thought that elevated IOP may be linked to markers for biological aging, which can be seen as changes in genes that are switched on or off.
According to Dorota Skowronska-Krawczyk, from the University of California, Irvine (UCI) School of Medicine, the epigenetic changes we observed suggest that changes are acquired in an accumulative way.
If and when the disease is recognized early, this provides us with a chance to prevent vision loss.
The team looked at the nerve head of the mouse's eyes and found that IOP had been artificially raised. There was little difference between younger and older mice when it came to eye pressure, but older mice had a loss of axons.
The older mice were more vulnerable to the damage caused by inflammation and a gradual loss of cell function that would normally take years to develop.
The IOP is not fixed in humans.
Skowronska-Krawczyk says that their work shows that even moderate IOP elevation can lead to visual defects in older animals.
We are trying to understand the mechanisms of aging in order to find potential targets. Different approaches are being tested to prevent the aging process from happening.
The researchers think they can use the pressure changes to assess the epigenetic age of tissue in the eye and make treatments more personalized for individual patients.
Genetics, eye trauma, and medications can all cause the pressure inside the eye to increase. It could save the eyesight of millions if it were possible to study its impact.
As the world's population gets older, it is predicted that there will be as many as 112 million cases of glaucoma by the year 2040. These conditions can lead to blindness if not treated.
It's not possible to reverse the damage completely, but being able to detect it and the causes prior to it would make a difference.
The work emphasizes the importance of early diagnosis and prevention as well as age-specific management of age-related diseases.
The research has appeared in a journal.
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