Changeable factors linked to age-related macular degeneration
An observational analysis estimated that changing associated factors might prevent 30.4%–45.1% of cases, but it did not test interventions.
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
An observational cohort study of 478,867 UK Biobank participants examined links between 331 potentially changeable factors and age-related macular degeneration, an eye disease that damages central vision. Over a median 13.63 years, 10,903 participants (2.28%) were diagnosed with the disease.
The researchers screened factors from seven categories individually, then tested the initially associated factors together. Of 177 factors that passed the first screen, 34 remained associated after this adjustment, spanning five categories. Scores combining factors within these categories were also linked to the disease among participants with higher scores estimating inherited risk. The researchers estimated that 30.4%–45.1% of cases might be preventable by changing the associated factors.
Why it matters
For this age-related eye disease, the authors argued that systematically examining many changeable exposures could help inform population-level prevention.
Caveats
This observational study cannot show that changing these factors would prevent disease; the prevention estimate was calculated from associations, not measured in an intervention. The abstract does not identify the 34 factors.
The paper
Exposure-wide approaches identifying modifiable factors for age-related macular degeneration
Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University
The British Journal of Ophthalmology, Jan 10, 2026
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