Strong Link Identified Between Specific Systemic Diseases, Early Onset AMD

Objective: To evaluate associations between systemic comorbidities and early onset age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Design: Retrospective case–control study. Methods: 2 data sources were used in this study. The exploratory data set was drawn from medical records of patients treated at a university ophthalmology department and included patient demographics, time of diagnosis of early stage dry AMD and/or late-stage neovascular AMD or geographic atrophy. In addition, diagnoses of systemic cardiovascular and rheumatologic diseases were also included in the data set. Supervised and unsupervised machine learning models were used to characterize distinct features of patients with early onset or late-onset AMD, defined by a diagnosis at the age of ≤65 years or ≥66 years. The model development allowed the investigators to identify systemic conditions associated with these AMD subtypes. A validation data set derived from the All of Us Research Program, a nationwide longitud more...