Delays in rod-mediated dark adaptation in early age-related maculopathy☆
Section snippets
Patients and methods
Patients with ARM were recruited based on consecutive chart review of patients seen over a 6-month period in the Retina and Vitreous Service of the Department of Ophthalmology, University of Alabama at Birmingham. Inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) at least 60 years of age; (2) 20/25 visual acuity or better (best-corrected distance) in the eye to be tested psychophysically, as measured by the Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study (ETDRS) chart31; and(3) a diagnosis of ARM in the test
Results
All variables were normally distributed, so parametric statistics were used. There were no missing data on any variable. Group differences between the ARM patients and healthy participants on key variables were assessed using one-way analysis of variance (two-tailed, α = 0.05; Stat-View, SAS, Cary, NC). As indicated in Table 2, although the ARM group (mean age, 75 years) was on average older than the healthy reference group (mean age, 72 years), the two age distributions were not statistically
Discussion
These results clearly indicate that the kinetics of rod-mediated dark adaptation are typically impaired in patients with early ARM, as compared with older adults who have normal-appearing maculas, and are consistent with other studies using different methodology.9, 21 For example, the rod–cone break is delayed in early ARM patients by approximately 10 minutes, on average, as compared with healthy participants; this delay nearly doubles the time before the beginning of the rod-dominated limb of
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Supported by the National Institute of Aging (grant no.: R01 AG04212), Bethesda, Maryland; the National Eye Institute (grant no.: P30 EY03039), Bethesda, Maryland; Research to Prevent Blindness, Inc., New York, New York; and the Alabama Eye Institute, Birmingham, Alabama. Cynthia Owsley is a RPB Senior Scientific Investigator.
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The authors have no commercial interests in any device or product mentioned in this paper.