The Influence of Smoking on the Type of Age–related Macular Degeneration (AMD) Lesion

Abstract

Abstract: : Purpose: To analyse the influence of smoking on the type of AMD lesion (neovascular or non–neovascular) occurring in a large cohort of patients recruited from an ongoing collection of clinical data of those with AMD at a tertiary referral UK centre. Methods: Smoking data on 711 subjects were analysed in relation to the type of AMD lesion present. Colour fundus photographs were graded according to a modified version of the International Classification. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed, adjusting for age and gender, using the statistical package SPSS ver 9.0 for windows. Results: 578 subjects were graded with neovascular AMD and 133 with non neovascular AMD. There was no statistically significant association found between smoking status or increasing number of pack years and type of AMD lesion. The odds of ‘ex–smokers’ compared to ‘non smokers’ developing neovascular rather than non neovascular AMD when adjusted for age and gender was 0.86 (95%CI: 0.58 to 1.30) and that of current–smokers compared to ‘non smokers’ was 1.88 (95%CI: 0.91 to 3.89). Conclusions: Smoking is known to be a risk factor for AMD but at present there is no evidence to suggest that there is a difference in the type of AMD that occurs in smokers compared to non smokers.

Keywords: age-related macular degeneration • retinal neovascularization • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: risk factor assessment