Abstract
Purpose :
Our previous dietary pattern analysis in the Age-related Eye Disease Study cohort suggests peanuts as a beneficial food for age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
Methods :
We used data from 66,876 females in the Nurses’ Health Study followed for an average of 17.6 years between 1984 and 2012. All participants were aged 50 years or older and were free of AMD, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer at baseline. Cumulative average intakes of various types of nuts were calculated from 12 food frequency questionnaires administered every 2-4 years during the follow-up period. New AMD cases were identified first by self-report and further confirmed by medical records and retinal images. The “person” was used as the unit of analysis, and the worse eye was used for classification. Intermediate AMD was defined as having at least one of the following signs: drusen larger than 63 μm, pigment abnormalities, or any noncentral geographic atrophy (GA). Advanced AMD included neovascular AMD and central GA. We used multivariable Cox proportional hazards models to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs).
Results :
During the follow-up period, there were 1601 cases of AMD, including 898 intermediate AMD and 703 advanced AMD. For total AMD, compared to consuming no peanuts, consuming 4+ servings/week was marginally significantly associated with 36% lower AMD risk (multivariable HR=0.64; 95% CI=(0.40 to 1.03); p for trend=0.05). For intermediate AMD, there were also marginally significant associations with higher peanut intake. However, no significant association between peanut and advanced AMD was noted. While we observed similar (but nonsignificant) trends for other nuts, there were no significant associations between peanut butter, peanuts plus peanut butter, walnuts, other nuts, or total nuts and AMD.
Conclusions :
In this long-term prospective cohort study in older women, there was a trend suggesting beneficial effect of higher peanut intake on AMD, which was consistent with our prior study. However, these results need to be confirmed in other studies.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.