HIV patients have higher risk of eye disease

Patients suffering from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) were shown to have a four times higher risk of developing intermediate-stage age-related macular degeneration (AMD) compared to healthy people of the same age.

AMD is the leading cause of blindness and visual impairment in people over the age of 65, and is characterized by damage to the macula, which is the central region of the retina, Mount Sinai Hospital reported.

"With HIV and AIDS patients living longer than ever before, they are at an increased risk of developing several age-related diseases at an earlier age than HIV-uninfected people including cardiovascular disease and diabetes," said Douglas A. Jabs, Professor of Ophthalmology and Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and the lead author of the new study. "Their increased risk for age-related diseases in general led us to analyze how these patients are impacted by one of the most common age-related eye diseases, macular degeneration."

To make their findings, the researchers looked at 1,825 patients between the ages of 13 and 73 years old with AIDS at 19 sites across the United States. They compared retinal photographs taken of these patients with those of participants in the LSOCA cohort, that included uninfected individuals of the same ages. The data suggested intermediate-stage AMD prevalence was 10 percent higher in AIDS patients, and the risk jumped four-fold when the team adjusted for ages.

The team does not believe the elevated risk of AMD is not related to HIV drugs, but rather immunologic changes called "immunosenescence."

"Although the underlying mechanism leading to this increase in AMD in persons with AIDS is not yet known, it may relate to the state of chronic immune activation and systemic inflammation seen in these patients," Jabs said.

The findings were published in a recent edition of the American Journal of Ophthalmology.

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