• Optic nerve

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to respond to the letter from Professor Emeritus Phillips concerning our recent paper titled “Alzheimer's disease and glaucoma: is there a causal relationship?”.1 In this article, we presented evidence supporting the hypothesis that there could be a causal relationship between Alzheimer's disease (AD) and glaucoma that might be explained by decreased cerebrospinal fluid pressure (CSFP) in patients with AD. Evidence for this hypothesis was gained from CSFP measurement studies in patients with AD and patients with glaucoma. Opposing our hypothesis, Professor Emeritus Phillips cites his 1996 study, published in Acta Ophthalmologica Scandinavica, which rejected the hypothesis that normal-tension glaucoma (NTG) might be due to low CSFP.2 In that study, three patients who had optic neurectomies for meningiomas showed only pale optic discs without evidence …