Abstract
Purpose :
Statins are one of the most widely prescribed medications, and may be protective for age-related macular degeneration, but studies are not consistent. Retinal thickness is reduced in early AMD; even before AMD develops protective/deleterious AMD polymorphisms may be associated with thicker/thinner retinas respectively. The purpose of this study was to determine if statin use is associated with retinal thickness in a population-based cohort.
Methods :
Participants of European ancestry from the UK Biobank were included for analysis. Quantitative OCT data was obtained using the Topcon 3D OCT-1000 Mk2 machine and data for statin use was self-reported. Following quality control (excluding participants with poor image quality, self-reported eye disease or diabetes, reduced vision), 39035 participants were included, with 6796 cases and 32239 controls. Linear regression analyses, adjusted for age and sex, were performed with retinal thickness measures (RNFL, GCL, GC-IPL, ELM-ISOS, ISOS-RPE, photoreceptor layer, RPE and total retinal thickness) used as the outcome variable.
Results :
Significant association (after corrections for multiple testing) was identified between statin use and almost all retinal layers. The strongest association was for the total retinal thickness (β=-1.89, p=2.00x10-20). Inner retinal layers were thinner (GCL β=-0.36, p=9.3x10-10, GC-IPL β=-0.51, p=2.3x10-9, and RNFL β=-0.31, p=2.3x10-6), as were outer retinal layers (ELM-ISOS β=-0.081, p=8.9x10-4, ISOS-RPE β=-0.44, p=5.7x10-15, photoreceptor layer β=-0.32, p=8.7x10-17). Statins were not associated with RPE thickness (β=-0.17, p=0.15). Choroidal thickness was not available.
There was no significant difference in the proportion of participants excluded during quality control between statin users and controls (26% vs 25%), indicating that statin use is unlikely to be associated with other retinal abnormalities.
Conclusions :
Statin use is strongly associated with a thinner retinal thickness across multiple retinal layers. Mechanisms underlying this association are unclear. Possibilities include direct effects of the medications or of the underlying conditions for which participants were taking the medications.
This abstract was presented at the 2022 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Denver, CO, May 1-4, 2022, and virtually.