AAO 2024: Energy drinks and central retinal vein occlusions

Jonathan Brugger, MD, shared insights on the correlation of central retinal vein occlusions, or branch retinal vein occlusions, in young adults who consume numerous energy drinks.

Video Transcript:

Editor's note: The below transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Jonathan Brugger, MD:

Hi, I'm Dr Jonathan Brugger, a vitreoretinal surgeon in Charleston, South Carolina, with Carolina Eye Care Physicians, and I want to give an update about a cohort of patients that we're collecting and gathering data on. And these are some young adults, both male and female, who are presenting with central retinal vein occlusions, or branch retinal vein occlusions for no apparent cause.

Despite negative workups, we start to investigate their history, and we have determined that these individuals drank a lot of energy drinks. And this could be anything from Red Bull or Monster, and ultimately, those individuals were consuming maybe 2, 3 or 4 servings a day prior to their episode, and now we are treating those individuals. More recently, we are expanding the cohort to also include those with micro and macro aneurysms.

Again, in younger populations, individuals who may be naive to energy drinks are now consuming those and we are seeing some hemorrhaging of the retina. It's interesting now that as we look at macro aneurysms, we may want to explore asking older patients if they are indulging in energy drinks. We often label these with younger people trying to stay up later, trying to do all the good things. However, it could be possible that older patients, too, are indulging in these beverages. So, we are gathering these patients.

We're going to be looking at their outcomes and their presentations, as well as gathering their medical records from their primary care doctors of their behavioral changes to lower their blood pressure, as we know that vein occlusions are blood pressure driven.