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. 2010 May;51(5):2393-402.
doi: 10.1167/iovs.09-4228. Epub 2009 Dec 30.

An ecological correlation study of late age-related macular degeneration and the complement factor H Y402H polymorphism

Bareng A S Nonyane  1 , Dorothea Nitsch, John C Whittaker, Reecha Sofat, Liam Smeeth, Usha Chakravarthy, Astrid E Fletcher
Affiliations

An ecological correlation study of late age-related macular degeneration and the complement factor H Y402H polymorphism

Bareng A S Nonyane et al. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2010 May.

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate whether variation in the distribution of the risk allele frequency of the Y402H single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) across various ethnicities and geographic regions reflects differences in the prevalence of late age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in those ethnicities.

Methods: Published data were obtained via a systematic search. Study samples were grouped into clusters by ethnicity and geographic location and the Spearman correlation coefficient of the prevalence of late AMD and risk allele frequencies was calculated across clusters.

Results: Across all ethnicities, AMD prevalence was seen to increase with age. Populations of European descent had both higher risk allele frequencies and prevalence of late AMD than did Japanese, Chinese, and Hispanic descendants. Results for African descendants were anomalous: although allele frequency was similar to that in European populations, the age-specific prevalence of late AMD was considerably lower. The correlation coefficient for the association between allele frequency and AMD prevalence was 0.40 (95% confidence interval [CI] = -0.36 to 0.84, P = 0.28) in all populations combined and 0.71 (95% CI = 0.02-0.94, P = 0.04) when people of African descent were excluded.

Conclusions: Evidence was found at the population level to support a positive association between the Y204H risk allele and the prevalence of AMD after exclusion of studies undertaken on persons of African ancestry. Data in African, Middle Eastern, and South American populations are needed to provide a better understanding of the association of late AMD genetic risk across ethnicities.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Forest plot of total prevalence across all age groups.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Forest plot of risk allele frequency for the first 34 studies.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Forest plot of the risk allele frequency for the last 33 studies.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Log-transformed AMD prevalence versus risk allele frequencies by age weighted by sample size.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Log-transformed AMD prevalence across all age groups versus risk allele frequencies weighted by sample size.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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