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Review
. 2016 Jan-Mar;23(1):27-37.
doi: 10.4103/0974-9233.173133.

Management of Neovascular Age-related Macular Degeneration: A Review on Landmark Randomized Controlled Trials

Aniruddha Agarwal  1 , Kanika Aggarwal  2 , Vishali Gupta  2
Affiliations
Review

Management of Neovascular Age-related Macular Degeneration: A Review on Landmark Randomized Controlled Trials

Aniruddha Agarwal et al. Middle East Afr J Ophthalmol. 2016 Jan-Mar.

Abstract

In the last decade, a number of prospective clinical trials with carefully designed study protocols have been conducted for the treatment of neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD). These landmark clinical trials such as ANCHOR and MARINA and, more recently, the Comparison of AMD Treatment Trials and VIEW studies have revolutionized the management of neovascular AMD. While AMD continues to remain a leading cause of severe visual loss worldwide, advances in pharmacotherapeutics have led to substantial improvements in the outcome of these patients. The introduction of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor agents has resulted in improvement of visual outcomes and has had a positive impact on the quality of life among elderly population. While the contemporary management of neovascular AMD has been successful in tremendously reducing the visual morbidity, the financial burden of therapy has increased exponentially. To overcome these challenges, newer pharmacologic agents are evaluated for their efficacy and safety in AMD. Ground-breaking advances in bench to bedside research have led to discovery of new pathways that appear to be viable targets for preventing visual loss in AMD. In this review, study designs and results of landmark clinical trials in AMD from the past decade have been summarized.

Keywords: Aflibercept; Bevacizumab; Choroidal Neovascularization; Clinical Trials; Intravitreal Therapy; Ranibizumab; Retina; Wet Age-related Macular Degeneration; macular Degeneration.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Timeline of major milestones in the field of pharmacotherapeutics for age-related macular degeneration. In the figure, a number of landmark randomized clinical trials that have brought a paradigm change in the management of neovascular age-related macular degeneration, and led to the approval (by United States Food and Drug Administration) of therapeutic agents such as ranibizumab and aflibercept, among others, have been chronicled. The month and the year of the studies refer to the publication date of the primary endpoint manuscript
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