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. 2020 Dec 17;50(8):1963-1969.
doi: 10.3906/sag-2001-36.

The effect of long-term systemic immunosuppressive drug use on druse formation: a new perspective to age-related macular degeneration

Özkan Sever  1 , Ridvan Mercan  2
Affiliations

The effect of long-term systemic immunosuppressive drug use on druse formation: a new perspective to age-related macular degeneration

Özkan Sever et al. Turk J Med Sci. .

Abstract

Background/aim: To evaluate the effect of the long-term use of systemic immunosuppressive drugs on druse formation in patients aged over 50 years.

Materials and methods: The current retrospective cohort study includes 420 eyes of 420 patients. 210 eyes of 210 patients who used immunosuppressive drugs (Group 1) at least for the last 5 years and 210 eyes of 210 control patients (Group 2) who did not use any drugs were compared. All patients were older than 50 years and selected among patients who were followed by rheumatology and ophthalmology clinic at a tertiary university hospital. All patients had complete ophthalmic examination, fundus photography and optical coherence tomography (OCT). The primary outcome of this study is the difference in macular and paramacular druse formation rates between two groups.

Results: Small, intermediate, large, soft, and paramacular druse formation rates were significantly lower in Group 1 than those in Group 2 (P = 0.028, P = 0.001, P = 0.001, P = 0.001, and P = 0.001, respectively).

Conclusion: Patients who used long-term systemic immunosuppressive drugs had significantly lower hard and soft druse formation rate than age and sex matched control subjects.

Keywords: Druse; inflammation; systemic immunosuppression; age-related macular degeneration.

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Conflict of interest statement

None of the authors have any proprietary interests or conflicts of interest related to this submission.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Colour fundus photo and optical coherence tomography of a large macular druse from Group 1.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The druse formation rates of the groups. Group 1: the patients who used systemic immunosuppressive drugs, Group 2: control group who did not use any systemic immunosuppressive drugs.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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