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Published on: May 26, 2023
Age-related macular degeneration and cardiovascular disease in US population: an observational study
Jie Feng1, Feng Xie1, Zhijian Wu1
1Department of Cardiology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang, China.
Insights
Preventing age-related macular degeneration (AMD) may reduce cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk, especially stroke. Late-stage AMD poses a greater CVD risk than early-stage AMD, highlighting the importance of AMD prevention for overall cardiovascular health.
Area of Science:
- Ophthalmology
- Cardiology
- Public Health
Background:
- Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a leading cause of vision impairment.
- AMD and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) share common pathological and genetic factors.
- Existing research on the AMD-CVD relationship presents conflicting findings.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the association between age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs).
- To determine if AMD increases the risk of developing CVDs.
- To explore the impact of AMD severity on CVD risk.
Main Methods:
- Observational clinical study using data from 5523 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) (2005-2008).
- Binary logistic regression modeling was employed to analyze the relationship between AMD and various CVDs.
- Analyses were conducted with and without adjustments for demographic, health status, and behavioral confounders.
Main Results:
- Binary logistic regression analyses revealed a significant association between AMD and an increased risk of CVDs.
- This increased risk was observed both before and after adjusting for potential confounding variables.
- Late-stage AMD demonstrated a more substantial impact on CVD risk compared to early-stage AMD.
Conclusions:
- Preventing AMD development may lead to a reduction in the incidence of several CVDs, notably lowering stroke risk.
- Interventions aimed at AMD prevention could serve as a strategy for CVD prevention.
- Findings support integrated clinical education and interventions in ophthalmology and cardiovascular medicine.
Background:
As far as we know, age-related macular degeneration (AMD) has become one of the predominant causes of visual impairments. Previous studies have revealed that AMD and many cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) share the same pathologic and genotypic factors, making the connection between AMD and CVD a hot topic. However, the conclusions of the available studies on the relationship between them are somewhat divergent.
Methods:
We screened 5523 eligible participants from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) database from 2005 through 2008 for an observational clinical study design. Binary logistic regression modelling was used to estimate the relations between AMD and various CVDs with and without adjustment for demographics, health status, and behaviours related to health.
Results:
Binary logistic regression analyses showed that AMD was able to increase the risk of CVDs in patients both unadjusted and after adjusting for confounding variables.
Conclusions:
Within this study, preventing the development of AMD might cut down the incidence of several CVDs, in particular, significantly lowering the stroke risk. These findings indicate that interventions to prevent AMD may also help to prevent CVDs. In general, late AMD has a more severe impact on the risk of CVDs compared with early AMD. These results could help clinical ophthalmology and cardiovascular medicine in their clinical education and interventions.
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