DNA damage and repair in age-related macular degeneration

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a retinal degenerative disease that is the main cause of vision loss in individuals over the age of 55 in the Western world. Clinically relevant AMD results from damage to the retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells thought to be mainly caused by oxidative stress. The stress also affects the DNA of RPE cells, which promotes genome instability in these cells. These effects may coincide with the decrease in the efficacy of DNA repair with age. Therefore individuals with DNA repair impaired more than average for a given age may be more susceptible to AMD if oxidative stress affects their RPE cells. This may be helpful in AMD risk assessment. In the present work we determined the level of basal (measured in the alkaline comet assay) endogenous and endogenous oxidative DNA damage, the susceptibility to exogenous mutagens and the efficacy of DNA repair in lymphocytes of 100 AMD patients and 110 age-matched individuals without visual disturbances. The cells taken from AMD patients displayed a higher extent of basal endogenous DNA damage without differences between patients of dry and wet forms of the disease. DNA double-strand breaks did not contribute to the observed DNA damage as checked by the neutral comet assay and pulsed field gel electrophoresis. The extent of oxidative modification to DNA bases was greater in AMD patients than in the controls, as probed by DNA repair enzymes NTH1 and Fpg. Lymphocytes from AMD patients displayed a higher sensitivity to hydrogen peroxide and UV radiation and repaired lesions induced by these factors less effectively than the cells from the control individuals. We postulate that the impaired efficacy of DNA repair may combine with enhanced sensitivity of RPE cells to blue and UV lights, contributing to the pathogenesis of AMD.