Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Medications and cataract The blue mountains eye study

1998; Elsevier BV; Volume: 105; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s0161-6420(98)99049-2

1549-4713

Robert G. Cumming, Paul Mitchell,

Glaucoma and retinal disorders

Purpose Corticosteroids are known to cause cataracts, but the effects of other medications on the lens are unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between cataracts and a range of medications, including allopurinol, aspirin, chloroquine, diuretics, phenothiazines, and simvastatin. Design Population-based cross-sectional study. Participants 3654 individuals 49 to 97 years of age (response rate, 82%) from an urban community near Sydney, Australia, were included. Testing Lens photography. Primary outcome measure Lens photographs were graded for the presence and severity of cortical, nuclear, and posterior subcapsular cataract. Results After adjusting for numerous potential confounders in ordinal regression models, use of phenothiazines was associated with nuclear cataract (adjusted odds ratio [OR], 2.18; 95% confidence interval [Cl], 1.01–4.74); long-term aspirin users (≥10 years) had higher prevalence of posterior subcapsular cataract than did nonusers and short-term users (test for trend, P = 0.02); and the antimalarial drug mepacrine was associated with posterior subcapsular cataract (adjusted OR, 3.56; 95% CI, 1.56–8.13). There was a suggestion that use of chloroquine-like drugs for more than 1 year (test for trend, P = 0.12) might also be associated with posterior subcapsular cataract. Antihypertensive medications, cholesterol-lowering drugs, and allopurinol were not associated with any type of cataract. Potassium-sparing diuretics were the only diuretic to show any evidence of an association with cataract (test for trend for posterior subcapsular cataract, P = 0.14). Amiodarone was associated with cortical cataract (age- and gender-adjusted OR, 3.84; 95% CI, 1.01–14.81), but there were too few users to do analyses adjusted for multiple confounders. Conclusions Most drugs commonly used in the community do not appear to be associated with cataract. The findings of this study do not support the hypothesis that aspirin protects against cataract.