Key takeaways:
- Patients with diabetes taking GLP-1s had a twofold higher risk for wet AMD development in unadjusted and adjusted models.
- The risk increased with longer exposure to the drugs.
Use of GLP-1 receptor agonists was associated with a twofold higher risk for neovascular age-related macular degeneration development in a population-based study published in JAMA Ophthalmology.
“It has been postulated that the rapid reduction in blood glucose levels triggered by GLP-1 RAs leads to a hypoxic state of the retina that promotes further abnormal angiogenesis,” Reut Shor, MD, of the department of ophthalmology and vision sciences at the University of Toronto, and colleagues wrote. “Given that the underlying pathogenesis of [neovascular AMD] involves abnormal and excessive angiogenesis, we aimed to evaluate this hypothesis by investigating an association between systemic exposure to GLP-1 RAs and the incidence of [neovascular AMD] using data from a population-based study.”
Use of GLP-1 receptor agonists was associated with a twofold higher risk for neovascular age-related macular degeneration development in a population-based study.
Shor and colleagues analyzed health records collected through Ontario’s ICES institute, along with linked billing and prescription data.