♦ A new study with mice genetically predisposed to glaucoma did not develop this condition when provided with drinking water containing vitamin B3 (niacin, nicotinamde).

Glaucoma is a neurodegenerative disease, the second leading cause of irreversible blindness throughout the world.  It affects 80 million people worldwide including 3 million US citizens at least and is that particular country’s leading cause of blindness too.

Treatment requires eye drops, medication, or surgery but there may be natural alternative using supplementation with vitamin B3.

Glaucoma is extremely common and highly debilitating as the subject slowly loses sight. High pressure inside the eye (or intraocular pressure) causes progressive dysfunction with damage and loss of the retinal ganglion cells. Retinal ganglion cells are the neuronal cells connecting the eye to the brain via the optic nerve.

Increasing age is a key risk factor for glaucoma, contributing to both harmful elevation of intraocular pressure and increased neuronal vulnerability brought on by pressure-induced damage.

The treatment of mice prone to glaucoma, with vitamin B3 in their drinking water appears to have reduced the incidence. It’s hoped that the same treatment will work for humans. It would avoid unnecessary interventions if a simpler, cheaper alternative was available.

A research team led by Jackson Laboratory Professor and Howard Hughes Medical Investigator Simon W.M. John was assessing  the general age-related factors affecting blindness.  The study claims that about 15 percent of individuals with glaucoma become blind in at least one eye within 20 years of the first symptoms appearing, even with treatment. Sight cannot be recovered once the eyesight has been lost. It is however possible to slow the rate down.

The symptoms of glaucoma are:-

• patchy spots in your vision,
• severe headaches,
• eye pain,
• nausea and vomiting,
• blurred vision,
• eye redness,
• halos around light,
• and in late stages tunnel vision.

In order to catch glaucoma in its earliest stages, the  American Academy of Ophthalmology recommends glaucoma screenings every four years after age 40 and every two years after age 60.

The new finding proposes a way to keep the cells in the eyes from becoming worn down, and in turn becoming predisposed to developing glaucoma.  It is thought that vitamin B3 might help improve the “metabolic reliability of aging eye cells”. In other words, it protected the retinal ganglion cells by making them more resistant to increasing intraocular pressure.  One key finding is that NAD, which is an important cofactor in many enzyme based metabolic reactions declines with age. Vitamin B3 is a precursor for NAD and so replenishment helps in this particular instance. There may also be knock on benefits elsewhere with replenishment.

The team is now looking to enter clinical trials to test the effectiveness of vitamin B treatment in glaucoma patients, hoping to repeat the results they found in mice. The research team suggested that a single gene-therapy injection to the eye could bring about the same results. The issue for the elderly is that they tend to forget to take such supplements regularly.

Reference

Williams, P.A., Harder, J.M., Foxworth, N.E., et al. (2017) Vitamin B3 modulates mitochondrial vulnerability and prevents glaucoma in aged mice. Science. sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aal0092