A new study “The Prevalence of Age-Related Macular Degeneration in the United States In 2019” published in JAMA Ophthalmology, found that in 2019, there were an estimated 19.83 million Americans were living with some form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in 2019. This is an increase of approximately more than 2.75 times previous estimates (which used a more conservative definition of early AMD based on larger drusen size). An estimated 18.34 million Americans had early AMD and 1.49 million had the late-stage vision threatening form of AMD (“late AMD” included choroidal neovascularization and geographic atrophy). In addition to national prevalence data, the new study also provides data by state and by county.
AMD is a leading cause of vision loss for Americans ages 50 and older. AMD prevalence has not been estimated for the United States in over a decade and early AMD prevalence estimates are scarce and have been inconsistently measured. The new study was authored by researchers from NORC at the University of Chicago (NORC), the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington (Seattle), The Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of Michigan, the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Vision Health Initiative, with support from Prevent Blindness.
“AMD is a major cause of vision impairment and blindness, and costs Medicare approximately $1,290 per beneficiary diagnosed,” said David B. Rein, Ph.D., Program Area Director for NORC at the University of Chicago’s Public Health Analytics Program and the lead author of the study. “We developed estimates at the national, state, and county level with an interest in helping local officials understand their area’s disease burden of AMD.”
Additional key findings from the study include:
- Approximately one in 10 Americans ages 50 and older have the early form of AMD and approximately 1 out of every 100 Americans ages 50 and older have the vision threatening late form.
- Among persons ages 80 and older, approximately 3 in 10 had early AMD, and approximately 1 and 10 have the vision threatening late form.
- Gender, and age-standardized rates of the disease were lowest for Black Americans as compared to other race/ethnicity groups.
- The prevalence of both early and late AMD varied widely by U.S. County. After standardizing by gender and race/ethnicity, rates for vision threatening AMD were the highest in the Midwest and New England regions of the country, and in Florida.
“Age-related macular degeneration is a leading cause of vision loss in older adults. With the aging of the U.S. population, there may be an increased burden of this condition on the functioning and independence of older adults,” said CDC epidemiologist Elizabeth Lundeen, PhD, MPH. “Providing updated data on the distribution of AMD across U.S. states and counties, this first analysis of its kind, can aid in the prioritization and planning of public health interventions to mitigate the disability-related consequences of this common eye disease.”
Study estimates were developed using data within CDC’s Vision and Eye Health Surveillance System (VEHSS). The VEHSS houses diverse data sources for vision – including Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance claims data, electronic health record data, and self-reported and clinical evaluation data from representative national surveys. Researchers used a statistical methodology called Bayesian meta-regression which used the system’s multiple data sources to produce new, more comprehensive national and state-level estimates of vision loss and blindness.
Read the full news release from Prevent Blindness.
Source: Prevent Blindness