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Smoking and high cholesterol associated with AMD, age-related maculopathy

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PARIS — Both smoking and high HDL-cholesterol levels are strongly associated with the risk of neovascular age-related macular degeneration and earlier stages of age-related maculopathy, according to a French population-based study carried out in Bordeaux.

The role of complement factor H, which was demonstrated to be associated with neovascular AMD in several studies, was also confirmed.

The ALIENOR study included 963 patients aged 65 years or older enrolled since 1999. Smoking status was recorded from a standardized questionnaire and calculated in relation to the number of packets per year multiplied by the number of smoking years. Plasma lipids were measured at regular intervals.

"We found that smoking was strongly associated with stage 4 neovascular AMD and with stage 2 early maculopathy. The risk is cumulative: It increases with the number of packets per year," Marie Bénedicte Renaud Rougier, MD, said at the meeting of the French Society of Ophthalmology.

In the same study, HDL-cholesterol showed a positive association with all stages of age-related maculopathy, reaching statistical significance for stage 2 and stage 4.