Regular articleRetinal microvascular abnormalities and 10-year cardiovascular mortality: A population-based case-control study☆
Section snippets
Study population
We designed a case-control study nested in an existing prospective, population-based investigation of age-related ocular diseases, the Beaver Dam Eye Study. The selection and characteristics of the Beaver Dam Eye Study population have been described in detail.22, 23 In brief, a private census of the population of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, was performed from the fall of 1987 through the spring of 1988. Of 5924 individuals eligible, 4926 participated in the baseline examination. Comparisons between
Results
Comparison of baseline characteristics between cases (n = 413) and controls (n = 1198) are in Table 1. In general, cases were more likely to have a history of myocardial infarction and stroke and to have a poorer cardiovascular risk profile than controls.
Among controls, the most frequent retinal microvascular abnormality was retinopathy (11.0%), followed by focal arteriolar narrowing (5.3%) and arteriovenous nicking (4.2%). The mean AVR in controls was 0.88 (±0.07 standard deviation). We
Discussion
In this population-based study of white men and women aged 43 to 84 years at baseline, we found retinopathy to predict significantly 10-year cardiovascular mortality, independent of the effects of other retinal lesions, blood pressure, diabetes, glycosylated hemoglobin, and other risk factors. However, the cardiovascular mortality associations for other retinal microvascular lesions were less consistent and were present only in younger persons aged 43 to 74 years (multivariable-adjusted odds
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Manuscript no. 220151
Supported by the American Diabetes Association, Alexandria, Virginia (RK, TYW); the National University of Singapore, Singapore, Republic of Singapore (TYW); and the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland (grant nos.: EYO6594 [RK, BEKK] and HL66018 [RK, TYW]).