Relationship between glaucoma and admixture in postmenopausal African American women.

Objective: To investigate the association between African admixture and glaucoma prevalence among African American women.

Design, Setting, Participants: Participants included 11616 African American women from the Women's Health Initiative Study (WHI) for whom admixture information was available and included 2548 who self-reported a diagnosis of glaucoma.

Main Outcome Measures: Glaucoma.

Results: Significant association was observed between self-identified glaucoma status and admixture. However, this association was not significant in a model that included neighborhood socioeconomic status (NSES), hypertension, diabetes and body mass index (BMI). Self-identified glaucoma status was associated with diabetes that persisted after adjustment for admixture, NSES, hypertension, and BMI. Lower NSES was also associated with higher glaucoma risk but this association was marginal in the fully adjusted model and neither hypertension nor BMI showed association. When glaucoma status was limited to those reporting use or no use of appropriate ophthalmologic medication, no associations were observed in any of the models.

Conclusion: This study failed to find an independent association of glaucoma status and African admixture and these findings suggest that the higher frequency glaucoma in African Americans may be largely due to other factors.