Complement Inhibitors for Geographic Atrophy in Age-Related Macular Degeneration-A Systematic Review

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is one of the main causes of blindness and visual impairment worldwide. Intravitreal complement inhibitors are an emergent approach in the treatment of AMD, which have had encouraging results. This systematic review analyzes the outcomes and safety of complement inhibitor therapies for GA in AMD cases.

A comprehensive search on the PubMed and Web of Science databases returned 18 studies involving various complement inhibitor agents, with a total of 4272 patients and a mean follow-up of 68.2 ± 20.4 weeks.

Most treated patients were white (96.8%) and female (55.8%), with a mean age of 78.3 ± 7.8 years and a mean GA area of 8.0 ± 3.9 mm². There were no differences in visual function change between treated and control participants. The mean GA area change was 2.4 ± 0.7 mm² in treated participants vs. 2.7 ± 0.8 mm² in control groups (p < 0.001). The ocular and systemic side effects were similar to those of intravitreal anti-VEGF. A less-understood effect was that of the onset of choroidal neovascularization (CNV) in 1.1-13% of patients; this effect was found to be more frequent in patients with neovascular AMD in the fellow eye or nonexudative CNV in the study eye at baseline.

Complement inhibitors may represent a useful therapy for GA in AMD, but a personalized approach to patient selection is necessary to optimize the outcomes.