Question
Are smoking, alcohol intake, blood pressure, body mass index, and glycemic traits associated with age-related macular degeneration (AMD)?
Findings
In this mendelian randomization study, genetically predicted smoking initiation and lifetime smoking were associated with elevated risk of advanced AMD, genetically predicted smoking cessation was associated with decreased risk of advanced AMD, and genetically predicted alcohol intake was associated with increased risk of geographic atrophy.
Meaning
These findings support a potential causal association of alcohol consumption with an increased risk of geographic atrophy, smoking initiation and lifetime smoking with an increased risk of advanced AMD, and smoking cessation with a decreased risk of advanced AMD.
Importance
Advanced age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a leading cause of blindness in Western countries. Causal, modifiable risk factors need to be identified to develop preventive measures for advanced AMD.
Objective
To assess whether smoking, alcohol consumption, blood pressure, body mass index, and glycemic traits are associated with increased risk of advanced AMD.
Design, Setting, Participants
This study used 2-sample mendelian randomization. Genetic instruments composed of variants associated with risk factors at genome-wide significance (P < 5 × 10−8) were obtained from published genome-wide association studies. Summary-level statistics for these instruments were obtained for advanced AMD from the International AMD Genomics Consortium 2016 data set, which consisted of 16 144 individuals with AMD and 17 832 control individuals. Data were analyzed from July 2020 to September 2021.
Exposures
Smoking initiation, smoking cessation, lifetime smoking, age at smoking initiation, alcoholic drinks per week, body mass index, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, glycated hemoglobin, fasting glucose, and fasting insulin.
Main Outcomes and Measures
Advanced AMD and its subtypes, geographic atrophy (GA), and neovascular AMD.
Results
A 1-SD increase in logodds of genetically predicted smoking initiation was associated with higher risk of advanced AMD (odds ratio [OR], 1.26; 95% CI, 1.13-1.40; P < .001), while a 1-SD increase in logodds of genetically predicted smoking cessation (former vs current smoking) was associated with lower risk of advanced AMD (OR, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.50-0.87; P = .003). Genetically predicted increased lifetime smoking was associated with increased risk of advanced AMD (OR per 1-SD increase in lifetime smoking behavior, 1.32; 95% CI, 1.09-1.59; P = .004). Genetically predicted alcohol consumption was associated with higher risk of GA (OR per 1-SD increase of log-transformed alcoholic drinks per week, 2.70; 95% CI, 1.48-4.94; P = .001). There was insufficient evidence to suggest that genetically predicted blood pressure, body mass index, and glycemic traits were associated with advanced AMD.
Conclusions and Relevance
This study provides genetic evidence that increased alcohol intake may be a causal risk factor for GA. As there are currently no known treatments for GA, this finding has important public health implications. These results also support previous observational studies associating smoking behavior with risk of advanced AMD, thus reinforcing existing public health messages regarding the risk of blindness associated with smoking.