TY - JOUR T1 - Natural history of central sparing in geographic atrophy secondary to non-exudative age-related macular degeneration JF - British Journal of Ophthalmology JO - Br J Ophthalmol SP - 689 LP - 695 DO - 10.1136/bjophthalmol-2020-317636 VL - 106 IS - 5 AU - Liangbo L Shen AU - Mengyuan Sun AU - Aneesha Ahluwalia AU - Michael M Park AU - Benjamin K Young AU - Eleonora M Lad AU - Cynthia Toth AU - Lucian V Del Priore Y1 - 2022/05/01 UR - http://bjo.bmj.com/content/106/5/689.abstract N2 - Background The macular central 1 mm diameter zone is crucial to patients’ visual acuity, but the long-term natural history of central sparing in eyes with geographic atrophy (GA) is unknown.Methods We manually segmented GA in 210 eyes with GA involving central 1 mm diameter zone (mean follow-up=3.8 years) in the Age-Related Eye Disease Study. We measured the residual area in central 1 mm diameter zone and calculated central residual effective radius (CRER) as square root of (residual area/π). A linear mixed-effects model was used to model residual size over time. We added a horizontal translation factor to each data set to account for different durations of GA involving the central zone.Results The decline rate of central residual area was associated with baseline residual area (p=0.008), but a transformation from central residual area to CRER eliminated this relationship (p=0.51). After the introduction of horizontal translation factors to each data set, CRER declined linearly over approximately 13 years (r2=0.80). The growth rate of total GA effective radius was 0.14 mm/year (95% CI 0.12 to 0.15), 3.7-fold higher than the decline rate of CRER (0.038 mm/year, 95% CI 0.034 to 0.042). The decline rate of CRER was 53.3% higher in eyes with than without advanced age-related macular degeneration in the fellow eyes at any visit (p=0.007).Conclusions CRER in eyes with GA declined linearly over approximately 13 years and may serve as an anatomic endpoint in future clinical trials aiming to preserve the central zone.The data in the age-related eye disease study is available in the database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP Study Accession: phs000001.v3.p1). The raw data in our study are available on reasonable request sent to the corresponding author. ER -