Eyes might be the window to the soul but new Australian research shows they're also a way to the heart and clues to how healthy it is.
Sydney researchers have discovered that people with a common eye abnormality, retinopathy, are more likely to die from heart disease than those without the vision problem.
They believe the condition, where abnormal blood vessels damage the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye, could mirror similar problems elsewhere in the body.
"It seems the eyes could be a window to look at the condition of small vessels throughout the body, including the heart," said lead researcher Dr Jie Jin Wang, from the Centre for Vision Research at the University of Sydney.
"It's an opportunity to see damage that might be happening on the inside and help prevent it."
Type two diabetics are known to have high rates of both retinopathy and heart disease due to damage to the body's small blood vessels.
But the study published in the British Medical Journal showed non-diabetics with the eye condition had a similar increased heart risk.
Dr Wang's team tracked 3,000 Australians for 12 years and found those with diabetes and moderate retinopathy were more than six times as likely to die of coronary heart disease as those without retinopathy, after adjusting for other influential factors.
Non-diabetics with retinopathy were 50 per more likely to die of coronary heart disease than those without the eye condition.
Dr Wang said the find was very important because one in 10 non-diabetics aged over 50 had the condition.
"That is a lot of people who may have early clues of a possible heart problem in their eyes."
She said her results indicated older people should be incorporating an eye examination into health checks for cardiovascular disease risk.
"And people that are found to have retinopathy should be kept on watch for further heart check-ups in the future," Dr Wang said.
