Relationship of Aspirin Use With Age-Related Macular Degeneration

I n their prospective population-based cohort study of 2389 patients in the Blue Mountains region in Australia, Liew and colleagues report on the association of long-term use of low-dose aspirin and age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness in Western countries. The principal finding is that regular aspirin use is associated with an approximately 2.5fold greater risk of incident AMD. This relationship is specific for late neovascular (wet) AMD but not geographic atrophy (dry AMD) and is independent of potential confounders, such as cardiovascular disease, smoking, age, sex, systolic blood pressure, and body mass index.