Artikel
AMD in Lower Franconia: analysis of risk factors with regard to specific fundus features
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Autoren
Veröffentlicht: | 22. September 2004 |
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Gliederung
Text
Objective
To investigate whether presence of soft drusen, choroidal neovascularisation (CNV), pigment epithelial detachment (PED), pigment clumping (PC) and geographic atrophy (GA) was associated with gender, iris colour, smoking habits, and age of onset (AAO).
Methods
A cross-sectional study of 817 AMD patients (mean age: 77,8±6,7) and 461 normal age-matched controls (mean age: 77,4±5,2) from a defined geographic area (mainly Lower Franconian area of Bavaria) identified well-defined AMD patients with at least one eye showing a clearly defined pattern of atrophic early AMD and control persons without funduscopic evidence of early or late stage AMD. AMD patients were grouped with regard to specific fundus features with the possibility to define several distinct features of one phenotype several times. Associations were analysed by Chi2 analysis.
Results
Gender and smoking habits revealed no significant differences in AMD and controls while blue iris colour was significantly associated with AMD (p<0,05). Compared to normal age-related controls blue iris colour displayed significant association with GA (p<0,005) and PC (p<0,001) but not with soft drusen or CNV. Smoking (past + current) was significantly correlated to male gender (p<0,001), AAO<75y (p<0,01) and PC (p<0,05). Female gender showed significant association with soft drusen (p<0,001), GA (p<0,002) and PED (p<0,001).
Conclusions
AMD is a multifactorial disease with various influences modifying age of onset and disease severity. With the stratification of distinct AMD subgroups with regard to specific risk constellations we may better assess the possible environmental or genetic influence contributing to individual disease susceptibility.