Anti-VEGF improves vision, quality of life in AMD patients

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration who received 0.5-mg ranibizumab injections in the MARINA trial reported improved vision and better daily functioning than those who received sham treatment, according to a poster presented here.

"People with neovascular AMD treated with ranibizumab [Lucentis, Genentech] not only experience improved vision but also report improvement in the ability to function and perform everyday activities," Rohit Varma, MD, and colleagues said in a poster at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting.

The MARINA study randomized 238 patients to receive sham injection, 238 to receive 0.3 mg of ranibizumab and 240 to receive 0.5 mg of ranibizumab. The poster study compared patient-reported difficulty in performing near and distance activities at baseline and at 24 months between the 0.5-mg ranibizumab treatment group and the sham group.

Twice as many patients in the ranibizumab group reported improvement in their ability to complete near- and distance-vision tasks such as reading the newspaper and watching television than patients in the sham treatment group.

Item-specific responses were gathered with the NEI VFQ-25, and "improvement was defined as having less difficulty by [one] category or more on a 5-level scale," the poster said.

Disclosure: Dr. Varma is a consultant and receives financial support from Genentech.