Spring clock change associated with higher risk of retinal disease

A new study published in Scientific Reports has explored the relationship between clock changes and retinal vascular disease.

Researchers from Northwestern University in the US analysed insurance data from 18 million patients between the ages of 18 and 64 who were newly diagnosed with retinal vascular disease, including retinal artery and vein occlusions, proliferative diabetic retinopathy and neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

They found that in the month after the transition to spring – when people in the US lose an hour of sleep – there was a roughly 20–30% higher risk of proliferative diabetic retinopathy and neovascular age-related macular degeneration.

When the clocks returned to standard time in the autumn, people had an approximately 20–40% lower risk of retinal artery occlusion, retinal vein occlusion, proliferative diabetic retinopathy and neovascular AMD.

Lead author, Dr Rukhsana Mirza, of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, highlighted that the findings suggest gaining an hour of sleep may be protective against disease risk.

“Even one hour of change can impact a patient’s health and perhaps patients who are reporting new symptoms in the period after a change in time, specifically in the spring, may warrant closer evaluation,” she said.

Mirza shared that previous research has found a higher risk of heart attack and stroke following the spring transition.

“This led us to ask if these similar effects would be happening in the retina, which is one of the most metabolically active tissues in the body and contains some of the body's most complex microvascular networks,” she said.