Lower-dose metformin may be linked with reduced AMD risk
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NEW YORK — Patients taking lower doses of metformin may be at lower risk for age-related macular degeneration, revealing a potential novel therapy strategy, according to a speaker at the American Society of Retina Specialists meeting.
Dimitra Skondra, MD, PhD, said metformin has been getting a lot of attention as a potential way to address the “holy grail” of medicine, aging.
“Patients on metformin have decreased morbidity in cancer, heart disease and cognitive function,” she said. “What about AMD, the aging disease of the eye? When we see the pathway that metformin acts on, you see a lot of overlapping pathways.”
Skondra and colleagues conducted a case-control study using the IBM MarketScan Database to explore the impact of metformin use on AMD risk. The analysis included 312,404 patients with a new AMD diagnosis and 312,376 control individuals.
Any metformin use was associated with lower risk for AMD, with low to moderate doses associated with the lowest odds ratio for AMD.
A similar effect was found in patients with diabetes. Skondra said metformin decreases the risk for AMD in patients with diabetes without diabetic retinopathy but not those with diabetic retinopathy.
For other diabetes medications, insulin and sulfonylureas also reduced the risk for AMD. When used in combination with metformin, those drugs maintained a protective effect.
“With a low to moderate dose of metformin, there seems to be a signal — again, this is a retrospective case-control study — showing a decreased risk for AMD,” Skondra said. “We want to do more work, including more prospective clinical studies.”
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Skondra D, et al. Association of metformin and other antidiabetic medication use with risk of age-related macular degeneration. Presented at: American Society of Retina Specialists annual meeting; July 13-16, 2022; New York.
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