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Dystonia Society response to article on blepharospasm

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Dr Tom Warner, medical advisor to The Dystonia Society, has responded to an article from the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. The article reports that people who drink coffee are less likely to develop blepharospasm, a form of dystonia that affects the eye.

Dr Warner says:

“Blepharospasm describes involuntary spasms of the muscles around the eyes that lead to excessive blinking and sometimes more severe eye closure that can effectively blind people. It is a form of dystonia, a disorder causing muscle spasms in different parts of the body. In the UK, it is estimated that there are at least 40,000 people with different forms of dystonia, and those with blepharospasm comprise around 10,000. Onset of blepharospasm is usually in the 50s and 60s.

Treatment is usually with injections of Botulinum toxin into the overactive muscles, which partly weakens them and can be effective in the majority of people.

The cause of blepharospam is unknown but it is believed there is a problem with the motor pathways in the brain which lead to excessive activation of the muscles.

The current study looks at possible risk factors in the development of blepahrospasm. The authors suggest that coffee drinking may exert a protective effect against development of blepharospasm. This is an interesting development and the authors raise the possibility of caffeine having a role in the central nervous system. A similar finding has previously been reported in Parkinson’s disease.

The difficulty in interpreting this type of study is that it is open to many forms of bias as the data is recorded retrospectively. Therefore, it suggests a possible role but this needs to be examined further is a much larger group of patients, preferably in a different population before it can be confirmed as a definite association. An example comes from the authors own work. They had previously reported a protective effect of smoking on focal dystonia, but in the current study were unable to find this. Therefore, whilst the coffee data is fascinating, and offers new areas of research, it should not be accepted as a proven association, and certainly does not mean we should be addressing our coffee intake.”

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For more information on the report, you can read the BBC News story, Coffee drinking protects against an eyelid spasm that can lead to "blindness"

Visit the website of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry

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