The order is rapidly fadin’
- 1FI Proctor Foundation, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
- 2Institute for Global Health, and Department of Ophthalmology, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
- Correspondence to: Dr Thomas M Lietman FI Proctor Foundation, Room 307, 95 Kirkham Street, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143-0944, USA; tmlitsa.ucsf.edu
Onchocerciasis and trachoma may become historical diseases within our lifetime
In this issue of the BJO (p 796), Egbert et al utilise a case-control design to demonstrate that onchocerciasis and glaucoma are associated in an area of Ghana. Perhaps this is not surprising, as onchocerciasis is known to cause anterior segment inflammation and peripheral anterior synechiae, which can in turn lead to increased intraocular pressure. However, this association had never really been proved in the past, in part because reliable glaucoma data in the developing world have been difficult to come by. Interestingly, as glaucoma has become more recognised, onchocerciasis has become less so—glaucoma has moved up to number two in the WHO’s latest rankings, while onchocerciasis may have made the list for the last time at number 8 (table 1).1 This may be the ideal time to make such an association between these two diseases when awareness of both diseases is relatively …
