The relation of age-related maculopathy to smoking
This study examines the possibility of a link between cigarette smoking and age-related maculopathy, a disease with no available medical treatment to prevent it, which is a leading cause of blindness in people aged 75 years or more. The authors examined this possible association in people aged 43 to 86 who participated in the Beaver Dam Eye Study. Exposure data on cigarette smoking were derived from questions about present and past smoking patterns, duration of smoking, and the number of cigarettes smoked per day. Age-related maculopathy status was determined by grading stereoscopic color funds photographs using the Wisconsin Age-related Maculopathy Grading System. Smoking status, pack years smoked, and current exposure to passive smoking were not associated with drusen characteristics (type, area, and confluence) or signs of early age- related maculopathy in any sex-age group studied, except for a higher frequency of increased retinal pigment in males who had ever smoked compared with those who had never smoked. The relative odds for exudative macular degeneration, one form of late age-related maculopathy, in females who were current smokers was 2.5 compared with those who were ex-smokers or never smokers. For males, it was 3.29. These results suggest that exudative macular degeneration is associated with smoking and that different forms of macular degeneration may have different etiologies
