Effect of Nimodipine on Macular and Peripapillary Capillary Vessel Density in Patients with Normal-tension Glaucoma Using Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography

ABSTRACT

Purpose

This study aimed to investigate the effect of nimodipine on peripapillary and macular capillary vessel density (VD) in patients with normal-tension glaucoma (NTG) using optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA).

Methods

Sixty mg nimodipine was administered to 20 enrolled NTG patients for 3 months. Patients were treated with glaucoma medication simultaneously. The macular and peripapillary VD were measured automatically by OCTA at baseline, 1.5 h after administering nimodipine, and after 3 months of administering the drug. The retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL), ganglion cell complex thickness, visual field (VF) testing, intraocular pressure (IOP), blood pressure and pulse rate in each subject were assessed during each follow-up.

Results

Compared with the baseline, the parafovea VD was higher (50.89 ± 4.26 versus 46.80 ± 5.40, P = .044) 1.5 h after administration of nimodipine. After administration of nimodipine for 3 months, the parafovea VD was obviously increased (51.14 ± 5.68 versus 46.80 ± 5.40, P = .039), while IOP, systolic blood pressure, mean arterial pressure and mean ocular perfusion pressure were decreased compared to baseline (all P < .05). No significant differences were found between the radial peripapillary capillary and disc VD. The parafovea VD was positively correlated with the administration of nimodipine (β = 0.39, P = .004), RNFL thickness (β = 0.49, P = .022), and VF mean deviation (β = 0.4, P = .040) in the multivariate analysis.

Conclusions

Nimodipine effectively increased superficial macular capillary VD, but did not affect peripapillary capillary VD in patients with NTG. This finding indicates that patients with NTG may benefit from the administration of nimodipine.

KEYWORDS:

• Nimodipine
• normal-tension glaucoma
• parafovea vessel density
• optical coherence tomography angiography
• OCTA

Disclosure Statemen

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the State Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (81430007), the subject of major projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81790641), the Shanghai Committee of Science and Technology, China (17410712500), and the top priority of the Clinical Medicine Center of Shanghai (2017ZZ01020). The authors were supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82000887), Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (LY20C090001), Ningbo Science and Technology Project (2019C50085, 2019C50053), Zhejiang Provincial Medicine and Health Science Research Foundation of China (2018KY748), and Ningbo Natural Science Foundation (2019A610352). The sponsor or funding organisation had no role in the design or conduct of this research.