Researchers at the Centre for Vision Research, Westmead Millennium Institute for Medical Research (WMI), a close affiliate of the University of Sydney, have found that regular aspirin consumption is associated with an increased risk of neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD) – a leading cause of blindness in older people.<\/p>\n
The research shows that the risk appears to be independent of a history of smoking, which is also a known preventable risk\u00a0factor for AMD.<\/p>\n
Aspirin is one of the most widely used medications in the world with more than 100 billion tablets consumed each year.\u00a0Aspirin is commonly used in the prevention of cardiovascular disease, such as myocardial infarction (heart attack) and\u00a0ischemic stroke.<\/p>\n
While a five-year European study published last year suggested that regular aspirin use (defined as once or more per week\u00a0in the past year) was associated with AMD, other studies had reported inconsistent findings.<\/p>\n
The study by the Centre for Vision Research\u2019s Dr Gerald Liew, PhD, and colleagues was conducted over a much longer\u00a0period and found clear evidence of the risk.<\/p>\n
They conducted a prospective analysis of data from an Australian study (the Blue Mountains Eye Study) that included four\u00a0examinations during a 15-year period.<\/p>\n
Of 2,389 participants, 257 individuals (10.8 percent) were regular aspirin users. After the 15-year follow-up, 63 individuals\u00a0from the 2,389 participants developed incident neovascular AMD, according to the results.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cumulative incidence of neovascular AMD among nonregular aspirin users was 0.8 percent at five years, 1.6 percent at\u00a010 years, and 3.7 percent at 15 years,\u201d said the director of WMI\u2019s Centre for Vision Research, Professor Paul Mitchell.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmong regular aspirin users, the cumulative incidence was 1.9 percent at five years, 7 percent at 10 years and 9.3 percent\u00a0at 15 years, respectively, indicating that regular aspirin use is significantly associated with an increased incidence of\u00a0neovascular AMD. This increase was around 2.5-fold, after accounting for potentially confounding variables.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report\u2019s authors note that any decision concerning whether to stop aspirin therapy is \u201ccomplex and needs to be\u00a0individualised.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCurrently, there is insufficient evidence to recommend changing clinical practice, except perhaps in patients with strong risk\u00a0factors for neovascular AMD (e.g., existing late AMD in the fellow eye) in whom it may be appropriate to raise the potentially\u00a0small risk of incident neovascular AMD with long-term aspirin therapy,\u201d the authors conclude.<\/p>\n
Further confirmation of these findings will also be important.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Researchers at the Centre for Vision Research, Westmead Millennium Institute for Medical Research (WMI), a close affiliate of the University of Sydney, have found that regular aspirin consumption is associated with an increased risk of neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD) – a leading cause of blindness in older people. The research shows that the risk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2446,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}}},"categories":[19],"class_list":["post-2480","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cat-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}