Abstract
Purpose: :
To determine serum vascular endothelial growth factor 165 (VEGF165) levels in patients with exudative age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and healthy, unaffected control subjects. Moreover, to examine serum VEGF165 levels in patients suffering from an exudative AMD, with and without the CFH Y402H polymorphism.
Methods: :
130 patients were included in this case-control study. The serum VEGF165 was assayed by ELISA (R&D) in 65 patients with exudative AMD and compared to 65 gender- and age-matched healthy control subjects.Genotypes were determined by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis. The association between the exudative AMD and serum VEGF165 level was examined using a chi(2) test and logistic regression.
Results: :
Subgroup analysis of patients with exudative AMD revealed higher levels of serum VEGF165 in patients with predominantly classic CNV than in patients with minimal classic CNV, occult CNV and RAP’s. However levels of serum VEGF165- were not statistically significant different when compared between patients with exudative AMD and a healthy control group (p-value=0.2112).Genotype frequency differed significantly between the patients with exudative AMD and the control group (p < = 0.003)There was no association between levels of serum VEGF165 and the concomitance of the CFH Y402H polymorphism.
Conclusions: :
Our data showed no difference in levels of serum VEGF165 between patients with exudative AMD and healthy controls. These findings indicate that circulating serum VEGF165 levels may not play a role in the pathogenesis of all subgroups of exudative AMD and that it is a localised disease.
Keywords: age-related macular degeneration • neovascularization • vascular endothelial growth factor