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Higher birth weight associated with increased AMD risk, study finds
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SOUTHAMPTON, England — Higher weight at birth was associated with an increased risk of developing age-related macular degeneration in a retrospective study here.
Nigel F. Hall, MD, and colleagues with the University of Southampton reviewed the records of 392 people born in Sheffield, United Kingdom, between 1922 and 1930, whose size at birth was available and who accepted the invitation for ophthalmic examination.
The researchers sought to determine whether poor fetal growth was associated with an increased risk of AMD. Poor fetal growth was determined by the patients’ sizes at birth.
The researchers found, surprisingly, that patients with AMD had greater mean birth weights than those without (7.6 lb. compared to 7.3 lb., P = .03). After adjusting for age, gender and risk factors for developing AMD, the researchers found a significantly increased risk of AMD in patients with greater weight at birth.
One measure of fetal proportion — the ratio of head circumference to birth weight — was also significantly associated with increased risk of AMD. Patients with AMD had a significantly lower head circumference-to-birth weight ratio than those without (11.2 compared to 12, P = .01).
Other parameters describing size at birth showed a weaker relation or no relation to AMD, the authors wrote.
“The finding that age-related macular degeneration was associated with increased rather than decreased birth weight was unexpected. Failure of the developing fetus’s normal brain-sparing mechanism is a possible explanation for our finding of a lower head circumference-to-birth weight ratio among subjects with macular degeneration,” the authors reported.
Their report is published in Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences.