Risk Factors for Age-Related Maculopathy

Table 20

Studies investigating the relationship between alcohol and risk for ARM.

Study	No. of cases	Measure of risk factor	Type of ARM	Odds ratio or relative risk	95% confidence interval
Cross-Sectional Studies
Beaver Dam Eye Study [285]	4926	Consumption of beer in the past year	Pigmentary changes	1.13	1.02
			Neovascular AMD	1.41	1.41
Blue Mountains Eye Study [286]	3654	Consumption of spirits	Early ARM	1.61	1.07–2.41
		Consumption of beer	Early ARM	1.42	0.86–2.35
			Late ARM	0.89	0.32–2.48
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1 [287]	3072	Consumption of wine	Early and Late ARM	0.81	0.67–0.99
Los Angeles Latino Eye Study [114]	5875	“Heavy” consumption of alcohol (>5 drinks per session)	Geographic atrophy	12.7	1.5–104.6
			Neovascular AMD	5.8	1.3–25.8
Andhra Pradesh Eye Study [41]	3723	“Light” alcohol drinkers versus non-drinkers	Early and late ARM	0.38	0.19–0.76
Prospective Studies
Beaver Dam Eye Study [116, 288]	3534	Consumption of >78 g/wk of alcohol from beer versus 0 g/week beer consumption	Early ARM	N/A	N/A [Power 0.08 (10.6% Incidence versus 6.9% Incidence)]
Reykjavik Eye Study [34, 35]	846	Current alcohol consumption	Soft drusen	0.48	0.28–0.82 (<Monthly)
				0.34	0.16–0.72 (>Monthly)
Copenhagen City Eye Study [38, 39]	359	Alcohol consumption >250 g/wk	Early ARM	4.6	1.1–19.2