THURSDAY, June 12 (HealthDay News) -- Alcohol consumption is not a risk factor for early or late aging macula disorder (AMD) in the general population, according to a paper published in the June issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology.
Sharmila Boekhoorn, M.D., Ph.D., of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and colleagues analyzed 4,229 participants in the prospective, population-based Rotterdam Study, who had complete data on alcohol consumption and who were at risk of AMD. The International Classification and Grading System for AMD was used to grade AMD. The patients were followed-up for a mean of eight years.
During follow-up, 519 participants developed early incident AMD, and 81 were diagnosed with late incident AMD, the researchers found. No association between AMD and alcohol consumption or any specific kind of alcoholic beverage was identified, after adjusting for confounders such as age, sex, smoking and complement factor H genotype status.
"Neither overall nor specific alcohol consumption was associated with early or late incident AMD in our population-based prospective cohort study. Considering the lack of consistent results among studies, we believe that alcohol consumption is not an important risk factor for AMD," the authors conclude.
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