Abstract
Purpose :
To evaluate relationships of dietary nutrient intake with baseline status and incidence of age-related cataract in the Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS).
Methods :
In this nested case-control and prospective study from a multi-center phase 3 randomized clinical trial, we estimated baseline nutrient intake with a validated food frequency questionnaire and ascertained cataract presence, severity, and progression from annual photographs across a 12 year (y) period. We applied repeated measures logistic regression to examine the baseline nutrient-cataract relationships, and Cox regression in the incident analysis. Analysis of cataract prevalence included 6129 eyes of 3115 participants collected over 10.4 years. Analyses of cataract incidence included 6046 eyes of 3073 participants over a 10.5 year period.
Results :
Intake of vitamin A (see Table 1 and 2 for Odds Ratios), copper, zinc, magnesium, calcium, and lactose was associated with decreased baseline prevalence of at least moderate nuclear cataract. Cholesterol, linoleic acid, monounsaturated fat, and oleic acid were associated with increased incidence of nuclear cataract. Vitamin E and Niacin were associated with decreased incidence of nuclear cataract. Arachidonic acid was associated with an increase in progression to cataract extraction.
Conclusions :
Dietary intake of certain nutrients may be associated with cataract incidence and prevalence. Specifically, vitamin A, copper, magnesium, calcium and lactose were associated with a decreased baseline prevalence of mild and moderate nuclear cataract, while various fatty acids conferred significant risk for prevalence or incidence of nuclear cataract.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2017 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, May 7-11, 2017.