Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 25, 2025
Author Spotlight: Ex Vivo OCT-Based Multimodal Imaging of Human Donor Eyes for Research into Age-Related Macular Degeneration
Published on: May 26, 2023
Prevalence of Age-related Maculopathy: The Beaver Dam Eye Study
Ronald Klein1, Barbara E K Klein1, Kathryn L P Linton1
1Department of Ophthalmology, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Purpose:
The relationships of retinal drusen, retinal pigmentary abnormalities, and macular degeneration to age and sex were studied in 4926 people between the ages of 43 and 86 years who participated in the Beaver Dam Eye Study.
Methods:
The presence and severity of various characteristics of drusen and other lesions typical of age-related maculopathy were determined by grading stereoscopic color fundus photographs using the Wisconsin Age-Related Maculopathy Grading System.
Results:
One or more drusen were present in the macular area of at least 1 eye in 95.5% of the population. People 75 years of age or older had significantly higher frequencies (P < 0.01) of the following characteristics than people 43 to 54 years of age: larger sized drusen (>125 /μm, 24.0% versus 1.9%), soft indistinct drusen (23.0% versus 2.1%), retinal pigment abnormalities (26.6% versus 7.3%), exudative macular degeneration (5.2% versus 0.1%), and geographic atrophy (2.0% versus 0%).
Conclusion:
These data indicate signs of age-related maculopathy are common in people 75 years of age or older and may pose a substantial public health problem.
