Age-Related Macular Degeneration Increases Rheumatoid Arthritis Risk, Study Finds
Researchers report that the prevalence of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is greatly higher in patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD), regardless of the presence of visual disability. A recent study was published in the journal Scientific Reports by Jee Moon Yoon and colleagues..
Age-related macular degeneration is a leading cause of blindness among older adults. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease, characteristically involving the joints. They investigated this in a risk study of RA in individuals with AMD, with and without visual disability, using data on over 2 million South Koreans.
This was a large cohort study, with 3,537,293 people who underwent health checkup in 2009 and were followed for 10 years until 2019. Patients were stratified into three groups: patients suffering from AMD without VD, patients with AMD with VD, and controls without AMD. Loss of vision or defects in the visual field according to certified criteria by the Ministry of Health and Welfare of Korea was used as the condition for diagnosing visual disability. The incidence of RA diagnoses was tracked during the study period, and the analysis used multivariable-adjusted Cox regression to estimate RA risk in the exposed relative to the control groups. Lifestyle factors and other possible confounders were controlled for in the hazard ratios (HRs).
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