Psychological stress can damage eyesight

Berlin, June 20: Persistent psychological stress can be a major contributor to vision loss and its progression, scientists including those from India have found.

Clinical practice implications of this finding include a recommendation to improve the clinician-patient relationship and provide stress- reduction treatments and psychological counselling to interrupt the vicious cycle of stress and progressive vision loss.

“The behaviour and words of the treating physician can have farreaching consequences for the prognosis of vision loss. Many patients are told that the prognosis is poor and that they should be prepared to become blind one day,” said Muneeb Faiq, All India Institute of Medical Sciences ( AIIMS) New Delhi.

“Even when this is far from certainty and full blindness almost never occurs, the ensuing fear and anxiety are a neurological and psychological double- burden with physiological consequences that often worsen the disease condition,” said Faiq.

The study, published in the EPMA Journal, is based on a comprehensive analysis of hundreds of published research and clinical reports on the relationship of stress and ophthalmologic diseases.

“There is clear evidence of a psychosomatic component to vision loss, as stress is an important cause — not just a consequence — of progressive vision loss resulting from diseases such as glaucoma, optic neuropathy, diabetic retinopathy, and age- related macular degeneration,” said Bernhard Sabel, from Magdeburg University in Germany.

Some case reports are presented showing how stress induces vision loss and how reduction of stress contributes to vision restoration.

“Continuous stress and elevated cortisol levels negatively impact the eye and brain,” said Sabel.

He emphasised that both the eye and the brain are involved in vision loss, a fact that is often overlooked by treating physicians and is not systematically documented in the medical literature.

Increased intraocular pressure, endothelial dysfunction ( Flammer syndrome), and inflammation are some of consequences of stress causing further damage.