Abstract
Purpose :
Retinal parameters could reflect systemic vascular changes. With the advances of deep learning technology, we have recently developed an algorithm to predict retinal age based on fundus images, which could be a novel biomarker for aging. Therefore, we aim to investigate associations of retinal age gap with incident cardiovascular disease (CVD).
Methods :
A deep learning model was trained based on 19 200 fundus images of 11 052 participants without any medical history at baseline to predict the retinal age. Retinal age gap (retinal age predicted minus chronological age) was generated for the remaining 35 917 participants. Cox proportional hazards regression models and restricted cubic splines were used to explore the association between retinal age gap and incident CVD.
Results :
After a median follow-up of 5.83 years (interquartile range: 5.73-5.97), 675 (2.00%) developed CVD. In the fully adjusted model, each 1-year increase in retinal age gap was associated with a 3% increase in the risk of incident CVD (hazard ratio=1.03 [95% CI, 1.01–1.06]; P =0.014). In the restricted cubic splines analysis, the risk of incident CVD increased significantly when retinal age gap reached 1.21 (hazard ratio=1.05 [95% CI, 1.00–1.10]; P -overall <0.0001; P -nonlinear=0.0681).
Conclusions :
We found that retinal age gap was significantly associated with incident CVD events, supporting the potential of this novel biomarker in identifying individuals at high risk of future CVD events.
This abstract was presented at the 2023 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in New Orleans, LA, April 23-27, 2023.