The Correlation Between Body Weight and Intraocular Pressure

INTRODUCTION: Preflight body weight is a strong predictor of visual changes in spaceflight. To understand the effect of body weight on the eye, we examined the effect of increased body mass index on intraocular pressure on Earth. METHODS: We conducted a systematic review to summarize the relationship between weight parameters (including body mass index (BMI) and obesity indices), and intraocular pressure (IOP). Study selection and data extraction were performed in duplicate using EMBASE, MEDLINE, and CENTRAL, from database inception to the second week of April 2020. RESULTS: A total of 66 individual studies were included for qualitative analysis from the 1364 studies eligible for title and abstract screening. A total of 39 studies were available for quantitative analysis. The average BMI was 25.9 (range, 20.1-48.8) and the average IOP was 14.9 mmHg (range, 11.6-27.8). The overall pooled RR between BMI and elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) was 1.06 (95% CI, 1.04-1.07), meaning for each unit increase in BMI one is 6% more likely of having higher IOP than baseline. Two studies assessed the effects of bariatric surgery, and both showed significant decreases in IOP postoperatively. CONCLUSION: A higher BMI was associated with increased IOP in ground-based studies. IOP also decreased with weight loss. These data support the idea that alterations in body weight affect intraocular pressures. Further research is needed to understand the relationship between body weight, IOP, and microgravity-induced visual changes. This finding may also be useful clinically.