Visual acuity worse in patients with dry AMD who smoke
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Key takeaways:
- Female smokers had a greater visual acuity decline than male smokers.
- Hypertension, diabetes and number of injections received did not affect progression to wet AMD.
SEATTLE — A study on progression of dry age-related macular degeneration found that smoking did not affect the likelihood of developing wet AMD, but smokers had worse visual acuity than nonsmokers.
“Our analysis revealed that female smokers experienced a more noticeable decline in visual acuity compared to male smokers over time,” Sharat Chandra Vupparaboina, of Wichita State University, and colleagues wrote in a poster presented at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology annual meeting.
Vupparaboina and colleagues used retrospective electronic health record data collected at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center from Oct. 5, 2006, to July 30, 2023. For analysis, the date of initial dry AMD diagnosis was considered the index year, and the year of wet AMD clinical diagnosis was considered the conversion year.
Of the 123 eligible eyes identified, 104 eyes had dry AMD at baseline.
Eyes were grouped based on how long it took to develop wet AMD, with group 1 developing wet AMD within 5 years, group 2 developing wet AMD between 5 and 10 years, group 3 developing wet AMD between 10 and 15 years, and group 4 not converting to wet AMD by the time the study ended.
Of the 104 eyes with dry AMD, 49 eyes converted to wet AMD in an average of 7.4 years.
The average age of patients at presentation was 71.16 years in eyes that converted and 66.75 years in eyes that did not convert.
In a survival analysis, there was a survival probability of 52.88% for dry AMD eyes at the end of the study period.
Using a mixed linear model regression, patients who smoked had worse visual acuity than nonsmokers. Additionally, female smokers experienced more significant visual acuity decline compared with male smokers.
Compared with the nonconverted group, visual acuity worsened more in patients who converted to wet AMD.
“While smoking didn’t affect the likelihood of developing wet AMD, smokers, in general, had markedly poorer visual acuity than nonsmokers,” Vupparaboina and colleagues wrote, adding that baseline conditions including hypertension, diabetes and the number of injections received did not influence progression.
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Vupparaboina SC, et al. Longitudinal study on dry AMD progression to neo-vascular AMD over a 15-year follow-up period. Presented at: Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting; May 5-9, 2024; Seattle.
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