PLoS ONE (Jan 2020)

Carotid artery intima-media thickness, HDL cholesterol levels, and gender associated with poor visual acuity in patients with branch retinal artery occlusion.

  • Masayuki Yasuda,
  • Hajime Sato,
  • Kazuki Hashimoto,
  • Urara Osada,
  • Takehiro Hariya,
  • Hiroko Nakayama,
  • Toshifumi Asano,
  • Noriyuki Suzuki,
  • Tatsu Okabe,
  • Mai Yamazaki,
  • Megumi Uematsu,
  • Masanori Munakata,
  • Toru Nakazawa

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240977
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 15, no. 10
p. e0240977

Abstract

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PurposeTo investigate factors associated with poor visual acuity (VA) in branch retinal artery occlusion (BRAO).MethodsThis was a retrospective cross-sectional study of 72 eyes with BRAO of 72 patients. For statistical comparison, we divided the patients into worse-VA (decimal VA = 0.5) groups. We examined the association of clinical findings, including blood biochemical test data and carotid artery ultrasound parameters, with poor VA.ResultsMedian age, hematocrit, hemoglobin and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) differed significantly between the groups (P = 0.018, P ConclusionsWe found that increased IMT-Bmax, decreased HDL, and female sex were associated with poor VA in BRAO patients. Our findings might suggest novel risk factors for visual dysfunction in BRAO and may provide new insights into the pathomechanisms underlying BRAO.