Abstract
Purpose :
To investigate associations between aqueous humor cytokines and best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) or central macula thickness (CMT) in patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD).
Methods :
Sixty-five eyes of 65 patients, who were diagnosed with nAMD and scheduled to receive intravitreal injection of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) antibody, were enrolled (males / females; 42 / 23, average age ± standard deviation; 74.2 ± 10.4 years old). Undiluted aqueous humor samples were collected before the first initiation of anti-VEGF antibody. The levels of IL-1ra, IL-4, IL-6, IL-7, IL-8, IL-9, IL-12, IL-13, Eotaxin, G-CSF, IFN-g, IP-10, MCP-1, MIP-1α, MIP-1β and VEGF in the samples were measured by a multiplex bead array. BCVA was converted to logMAR units for statistical analysis. The mean retinal thicknesses of the macula in the central 1 mm on the ETDRS grid were defined as CMT. Cluster analysis was performed by Ward’s method for hierarchical clustering, and the samples were divided into four clusters by BCVA, CMT and cytokines. Correlations between inflammatory cytokines and BCVA or CMT were also evaluated by multiple regression analysis.
Results :
The cluster including BCVA and CMT consisted of cytokines containing IL-7, IL-12, IL-13 and VEGF. Other three clusters consisted of cytokine groups as follows: the first cluster was composed of L-1ra and IL-9; the second cluster was composed of IL-4, IL-6, Eotaxin, G-CSF, IFN-g and IP-10; the third cluster was composed of IL-8, MCP-1, MIP-1α and MIP-1β. There were positive correlations between logMAR and CMT (P = 0.0325), IL-13 level (P = 0.0215) or VEGF level (P = 0.0058), and negative correlation between logMAR and IL-12 level (P = 0.0272). CMT correlated positively with MCP-1 level (P = 0.0041), and negatively with VEGF level (P = 0.0313).
Conclusions :
These data suggest that in both cluster analysis and multiple regression analysis, VEGF have associations with BCVA and CMT, and also IL-12 and IL-13 are associated with BCVA at the onset in nAMD eyes.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.