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Postmenopausal hormone use, oral contraceptives may lower risk of neovascular AMD, study finds
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While postmenopausal hormone and oral contraceptives may be associated with a lower risk of neovascular age-related macular degeneration, they do not appear to benefit women with the early form of the disease, a study by researchers in Boston suggests.
"Factors influencing lifetime exposure to estrogens were not consistently associated with the disease," the authors said.
To determine whether estrogen exposure may be associated with a lower risk of developing AMD, Diane Feskanich, ScD, and colleagues evaluated postmenopausal hormone (PMH) use, prior use of oral contraceptives, ages at menarche and menopause, and parity among 74,996 postmenopausal women over a 22-year period. During this time, 554 women had developed early AMD and 334 women developed neovascular AMD — all with visual acuities of 20/30 or worse.
After adjusting for smoking and other factors, the investigators found that current PMH users had a 48% lower risk of developing neovascular AMD than those who had never used PMH.
However, risk did not decrease linearly with longer use, the authors noted.
"Risk was lowest for PMH users who had used [oral contraceptives] in the past (P = .03)," they said.
Current PMH users were at a 34% increased risk of developing early AMD, while oral contraceptive use was not associated with risk, the authors reported.
"The only remarkable finding for the endogenous estrogenic factors was a 26% lower risk of early AMD for parous women," they added.
The study is published in the April issue of Archives of Ophthalmology.