Kurzfassung

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of irreversible vision loss in industrialized countries.The earliest signs of age-related macular degeneration are discrete yellow deposits underneath the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) called drusen, with areas of mottled hyper- and hypopigmentation in the retinal epithelium. The advanced stages of the disease can be categorised into dry (geographic atrophy) and exsudative forms (choroidal neovascularisation [CNV]).
In a previous...Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of irreversible vision loss in industrialized countries.The earliest signs of age-related macular degeneration are discrete yellow deposits underneath the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) called drusen, with areas of mottled hyper- and hypopigmentation in the retinal epithelium. The advanced stages of the disease can be categorised into dry (geographic atrophy) and exsudative forms (choroidal neovascularisation [CNV]).
In a previous study the prevalence of AMD in the A2 GHS cohort was determined on the basis of fundus photographs from 4,340 participants.
The aim of this study is to validate the previously identified huge differences in antibody patterns in the AMD A2 GHS cohort in comparison to healthy control subjects to understand the underlying mechanism in pathogenesis. For the analysis of antibody patterns and identification of potential autoantibody biomarker candidates we chose a highly sensitive antigen microarray. The antibody patterns will be correlated with the severity of the AMD stage in order to potentially understand why some of the dry AMD patients develop wet AMD and others to do not, and if those immunoreactivities can potentially be useful as new targets for dry AMD treatment. Additionally, the distribution of autoantibody levels in different stages of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) will be associated with possible risk factors for AMD (age, sex, smoking status, alcohol consumption, obesity, BMI, dyslipidemia, statin intake, history of hormone therapy, level of homocysteine, diabetes mellitus, HbA1C, fasting glucose level, systemic hypertension, atherosclerosis  and history of stroke or myocardial infarction) using logistic regression models.» weiterlesen» einklappen