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FIDO study shows greater risk for vision loss from undertreatment of wet AMD at 10 years
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CHICAGO — Undertreating patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration posed a greater risk for vision loss compared with patients treated continuously with anti-VEGF agents over 10 years, according to a speaker here.
“Continuous mixed interval dosing can provide long-term stability of early vision gains, which is especially important with longer-acting drugs, port delivery systems and gene therapy on the horizon,” Ivan J. Suñer, MD, MBA, said at the American Society of Retina Specialists meeting.
The FIDO study included 145 patients with wet AMD who received continuous fixed-interval dosing of anti-VEGF agents for 10 years. Patients received injections every 4 to 8 weeks, and researchers evaluated the mean change in ETDRS letter scores from baseline. Secondary outcome measures included percentage of patients with 20/40 or better vision, percentage of patients with vision improvement from baseline and percentage of patients with three lines or more of lost visual acuity from baseline, Suñer said.
At 3 years, patients gained an average of 15.9 letters in visual acuity from baseline. At 10 years, improvement was maintained at 11.3 letters from baseline.
At 10 years, 70% of patients experienced improved vision from baseline. Only 6% of eyes experienced three or more lines of decreased vision.
Only 3% of patients at baseline had vision of 20/40 or better, but 37% of patients at 10 years maintained 20/40 vision.
“The greater risk of vision loss is from discontinuous therapy than from continued therapy,” Suñer said. – by Robert Linnehan
Reference:
Suñer IJ. FIDO study: 10-year outcomes of eyes receiving continuous, fixed-interval dosing of anti-VEGF agents for neovascular age-related macular degeneration. Presented at: American Society of Retina Specialists annual meeting; July 27-30, 2019; Chicago.
Disclosure: Suñer reports he is a consultant, speaker and investigator for Genentech/Roche and Novartis, a consultant for Regeneron, and a consultant and investigator for Allergan.