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Visual acuity worse in patients with dry AMD who smoke 

Key Takeaways

  • A study on progression of dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) found that smoking did not affect the likelihood of developing wet AMD, but smokers had worse visual acuity than nonsmokers.
  • Female smokers had a greater visual acuity decline than male smokers. 

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) happens when the centermost part of the retina, called the macula, is damaged. There are two types of AMD, dry AMD, and wet AMD. About 90% of people who have AMD have the dry form, when parts of the macula get thinner with age and tiny yellow deposits made up of lipids (fats) and protein, called drusen, grow. Dry AMD can progress to a more serious form of AMD called wet AMD, when new, abnormal blood vessels grow under the retina. 

Sharat Chandra Vupparaboina and colleagues from Wichita State University conducted a study to determine factors that influence progression of dry AMD to wet AMD. They used electronic health record data collected at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center to identify 104 eyes with dry AMD at baseline. They then grouped the eyes on how long it took to develop wet AMD, with group 1 developing wet AMD within 5 years, group 2 developing wet AMD between 5 and 10 years, group 3 developing wet AMD between 10 and 15 years, and group 4 not converting to wet AMD by the time the study ended. 

Of the 104 eyes with dry AMD, 49 eyes converted to wet AMD in an average of 7.4 years. They found that that baseline conditions including hypertension, diabetes and the number of injections received did not influence progression. “While smoking didn’t affect the likelihood of developing wet AMD, smokers, in general, had markedly poorer visual acuity than nonsmokers,” Vupparaboina and colleagues wrote in a poster presented at the 2024 Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology annual meeting. They added, “Our analysis revealed that female smokers experienced a more noticeable decline in visual acuity compared to male smokers over time.” 

Edited by Suditi Kedambadi and Miriam Kaplan, PhD

Source: Erin Michael, Healio Ocular Surgery News, June 21, 2024; see source article