CLEVELAND, Ohio — People who are of European descent may be more at risk of age-related macular degeneration than those of African or Hispanic ancestry, suggests a new study from Case Western Reserve University, the VA Northeast Ohio Healthcare System and the Cleveland Clinic Cole Eye Institute.
Researchers hoped to identify clues that will lead to the development of new treatments for age-related macular degeneration, CWRU said in a recent news release.
CWRU and VA researchers examined demographic, lifestyle, clinical and genetic risk profiles for age-related macular degeneration, using data from more than 287,000 veterans enrolled in the Million Veteran Program, a large biobank of veterans recruited at more than 60 U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers, CWRU said in the release.
The study also included data from several other independent biobanks, making it one of the largest studies of genetic risk for age-related macular degeneration and the first to include populations of diverse ancestry, the university said.
The study was recently published in the journal Nature Genetics.
Age-related macular degeneration, which affects about 200 million people worldwide, can result in legal blindness. The disorder impairs the retina, an area of the eye used for reading, driving and many other tasks.
“An important aspect of our study is the inclusion of veterans of African or Hispanic ancestry — groups that have not been well-studied in prior genetic studies of age-related macular degeneration,” said Sudha Iyengar, a professor and vice chair of research in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
“By increasing the size of the study population,” Iyengar said, “the research provided additional information to identify genetic markers with more modest but potentially important biological contributions to the likelihood that an individual will — or won’t — develop age-related macular degeneration.”
The study also confirmed earlier beliefs that a history of smoking or alcohol use increases the likelihood of developing age-related macular degeneration, CWRU said.
Iyengar co-led the research with the late Robert Igo Jr., Dana Crawford and Jessica Cooke Bailey at CWRU. They collaborated with Neal Peachey, associate chief of staff for research of the VA Northeast Ohio Healthcare System and professor of ophthalmic research at Cleveland Clinic Cole Eye Institute.
The study also involved scientists from several VA medical centers across the country.
Julie Washington covers healthcare for cleveland.com. Read previous stories at this link.
Leave a Reply