UMMS Affiliation

Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences

Publication Date

2020-12-01

Document Type

Article

Disciplines

Eye Diseases | Ophthalmology

Abstract

Purpose: To determine behavioral and genetic factors associated with incidence and age of progression to advanced age-related macular degeneration (AMD), geographic atrophy (GA), and neovascular disease (NV), and to quantify these effects.

Methods: Longitudinal analyses were conducted among 5421 eyes with nonadvanced AMD at baseline in 2976 participants in the Age-Related Eye Disease Study (mean age of 68.8 (+/-5.0), 56.1% female). Progression was confirmed based on two consecutive visits on the AMD severity scale. Separate analyses for progression and age of progression were performed. All analyses adjusted for correlation between eyes, demographic and behavioral covariates, baseline severity scale, and genetic variants.

Results: A higher genetic risk score (GRS) including eight genetic variants was associated with a higher rate of progression to advanced AMD within each baseline severity scale, especially for the highest risk intermediate level AMD category, and smoking further increased this risk. When assessing age when progression to advanced disease occurred, smoking reduced age of onset by 3.9 years (P < 0.001), and higher body mass index (BMI) led to earlier onset by 1.7 years (P = 0.003), with similar results for GA and NV. Genetic variants associated with earlier age of progression were CFH R1201C (4.3 years), C3 K155Q (2.15 years), and ARMS2/HTRA1 (0.8 years per allele).

Conclusions: Rare variants in the complement pathway and a common risk allele in ARMS2/HTRA1, smoking, and higher BMI can lead to as much as 11.5 additional years of disease and treatment burden. Closer adherence to healthy lifestyles could reduce years of visual impairment.

Keywords

age-related macular degeneration, age of progression, genetics, lifestyles

Rights and Permissions

Copyright 2020 The Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

DOI of Published Version

10.1167/iovs.61.14.32

Source

Seddon JM, Widjajahakim R, Rosner B. Rare and Common Genetic Variants, Smoking, and Body Mass Index: Progression and Earlier Age of Developing Advanced Age-Related Macular Degeneration. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2020 Dec 1;61(14):32. doi: 10.1167/iovs.61.14.32. PMID: 33369641; PMCID: PMC7774056. Link to article on publisher's site

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Investigative ophthalmology and visual science

Related Resources

Link to Article in PubMed

PubMed ID

33369641

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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