NEI Director Highlights Metabolomics as an Approach to Understanding Glaucoma

The National Eye Institute (NEI) announced that NEI Director Michael F. Chiang, MD, featured recent research by NEI grantee Louis Pasquale, MD, in a National Institute of Health Director’s Blog post. Dr. Pasquale in collaboration with Jae Hee Kang, ScD, and Oana Zeleznik, PhD, explored 369 blood metabolites in relation to glaucoma in a large study of human data.

According to Dr. Chiang, the investigators found a strong association between glaucoma and two classes of lipids. Patients with elevated triglycerides and diglycerides were more likely to develop glaucoma, and the association was strongest in a subtype of glaucoma that causes early loss of central vision. Their work adds to a growing body of evidence that links health status to metabolism.

Dr. Pasquale is deputy chair for ophthalmology research at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, New York. Dr. Kang is assistant professor of medicine and Dr. Zeleznik is instructor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts.

The NIH Director’s Blog is available online here.

“Pasquale’s work adds to a growing body of evidence that links health status to metabolism,” stated Dr. Chiang in the NIH Blog post. “Similar associations have been made between various metabolites and kidney cancer, pregnancy complications, type 2 diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease.”

Dr. Chiang further noted, “For researchers interested in exploring associations between metabolites and disease risk, the NIH Common Fund offers scientists a national and international repository for metabolomics data and metadata called the Metabolomics Workbench Metabolite Database, which contained more than 167,000 entries in 2022.”

He concluded, “These findings and others offer the potential to prevent more and treat less. We urge anyone in an at-risk group, including people with a family history of glaucoma, to get regular, comprehensive eye exams.”