Abstract
Purpose :
To assess the prevalence of arthritis as a co-morbidity associated with vision impairment (VI) using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data across 3 states.
Methods :
Data from Alabama (AL), Nebraska (NE), and Ohio (OH) were extracted from the 2015 BRFSS dataset. Self-report of difficulty seeing with or without glasses was used to categorize VI vs non-VI. The respondents were divided into 3 age categories, 18-39 years, 40-64 years, and 65+ years, to examine age as a contributing factor to the co-morbid prevalence. Relative risk (RR) of arthritis in the VI vs non-VI population was calculated for each of the 3 age categories for each state.
Results :
The overall prevalence of self-report VI was 7.2, 3.2, and 4.4% for AL, NE, and OH, respectively and the overall prevalence of self-report of arthritic conditions was 33.3, 23.5, and 28.4%. The RR in the 18-39 age group was 2.27, 1.84, and 3.34 for AL, NE, and OH, respectively. In the 40-64 age category, the RR was 1.61, 1.90, and 1.75. In the 65+ age category, the RR was 1.34, 1.33, and 1.20.
Conclusions :
The BRFSS demonstrates important associations with vision impairment and arthritis, demonstrating prevalence differences of arthritis in the different age cohorts. In each of the three states assessed, the RR of arthritis in the VI vs non-VI population was higher in the youngest cohort than in the oldest cohort.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.