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.”
Shor and colleagues analyzed health records collected through Ontario’s ICES institute, along with linked billing and prescription data.
Their analysis included 46,334 patients with diabetes who were treated with GLP-1 receptor agonists (RAs) for at least 6 months and 92,668 patients with diabetes who never received GLP-1 receptor agonists. In the overall cohort, the average age was 66.2 years, and 46.6% were women.
Read more: GLP-1s may double risk for development of wet AMD
Source: Healio