In high-income nations, age-related macular degeneration or in short AMD is the main contributor to serious vision impairment in elderly adults. In the US alone, more than 15 million individuals presently suffer from the disease, with the number of new cases expected to skyrocket in the coming decades as populations age.
The degenerative eye disease associated with ageing impairs both central vision and fine detail perception. AMD is assumed to be caused by a number of genetic and environmental aging-related factors, but the best ways to prevent it or halt its growth are yet unknown.
Prior studies have suggested that medications to lower cholesterol, manage diabetes, and reduce inflammation may assist to minimize the chance of getting AMD, but these results were inconsistent and based on small participant numbers.
In this study, the authors aggregated the findings from 14 population-based and hospital-based studies, encompassing 38,694 participants from France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Russia, and the UK, in an effort to overcome these problems.
The investigations were conducted as part of the European Eye Epidemiology (E3) project, a pan-European collaborative network whose primary goal is to develop and analyze large pooled datasets to enhance our understanding of eye illness and sight loss.
All of the participants were over 50 and receiving at least one of the medications listed below: Levodopa, used to treat movement difficulties brought on by neurodegenerative diseases; statins to lower cholesterol; insulin to regulate diabetes; steroids to reduce inflammation.
In the included studies, the prevalence of AMD ranged from 12% to 64.5% (9,332 cases in total), but the prevalence of advanced (late) AMD ranged from 0.5% to 35.5% (951 instances).
After taking into account any potential influencing factors, the pooled data analysis revealed that medications to lower cholesterol or control diabetes were related to, respectively, 15% and 22% lower prevalence of any type of AMD.
The researchers highlight that no such connections were discovered for any of the other types of drugs or for severe AMD in particular, although there were only a limited number of such instances.
The researchers note that theirs is the first big pooled data analysis of its kind to include individual-level data from a variety of population-based and hospital-based studies.
“Yet, further longitudinal data are needed to confirm our findings, which are inherently limited by using cross-sectional data only and cannot infer causality,” they warn.
However, the results imply that metabolic processes play a crucial role in the development of AMD, which may open up new treatment options and have an impact on public health messages.
“Our study suggests that regular intake of [lipid lowering] and antidiabetic drugs is associated with reduced prevalence of AMD in the general population. Given a potential interference of these drugs with pathophysiological pathways relevant in AMD, this may contribute to a better understanding of AMD aetiology,” they wrote.
Source: 10.1136/bjo-2022-321985
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