Purpose:
To investigate age-specific prevalence of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in Tromsø, North Norway.
Methods:
The 6th Tromsø Study (2007-2008) is a cross-sectional health survey of the population above 30 years. Eye examinations included visual acuity, digital colour fundus photography and optical coherence tomography (OCT). Masked grading of photographs from a random sample of 3026 persons aged 65-87 years was performed according to the International classification of AMD. Eyes were categorized by predominant phenotypes (Table 1). Persons were classified according to the more severe phenotype of the two eyes. Grading of OCT and analyses of associations between high-sensitive CRP and serum lipids and AMD will be presented.
Results:
Results are available from a random sample of 278 participants, of whom 231 subjects had at least one gradable eye. Missing subjects (n=39) did not differ in age compared to participants (p>0.05). Persons with ungradable photos (n= 8) were older than those with gradable photos (p<0.0001). Among subjects with two gradable eyes, the concordance rate for phenotype was 65% (140/216). The prevalence of hard drusen as phenotype declined with age. Soft drusen as phenotype has a four times higher prevalence in the oldest age group compared to the youngest age group. The total prevalence of any AMD was 7.4%, for GA 1.7% and for CNV 5.6%.
Conclusions:
Preliminary results suggest a higher prevalence of any AMD than in other comparable studies except the Greenland study. In contrast to the Reykjavik and Oslo studies, we did not find a higher prevalence of GA than of CNV.
Keywords: age-related macular degeneration • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: prevalence/incidence