Abstract
Purpose :
Visual and anatomical response to intravitreal bevacizumab for the treatment of diabetic macula edema are highly variable in practice and clinical trials. We performed a retrospective case series to identify any clinical and genetic predictors of response.
Methods :
194 patients from the Registry of Advanced Diabetic Retinopathy have been genotyped and identified as having diabetic maculopathy where treatment includes intravitreal bevacizumab. Poor responders were defined as requiring more than 3 bevacizumab treatments to achieve greater than 10% change in central macula thickness from baseline.
Results :
Data collection is complete for 81 patients (responders n=19, poor responders n=62). There was no significant association between responder status and gender, duration of diabetes and baseline HbA1c. Age was associated with treatment response (responders; 56+/-12 years, poor responders; 65 +/-12 years, p=0.009).
Conclusions :
Initial analysis suggests systemic factors such as HbA1c and duration of diabetes are not associated with clinical response to intravitreal bevacizumab, but younger age is associated with better response. Further analysis is ongoing to confirm these findings and explore genetic associations (including haplotype and variation at the vascular endothelial growth factor genes) with treatment response.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2017 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, May 7-11, 2017.