Depressive Symptoms and Age-Related Macular Degeneration in Older People: The Cardiovascular Health Study

Purpose: To examine the association between age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and depressive symptoms. Methods: Population-based, cross-sectional study. A total of 2,194 persons aged 69–97 years were included in the current analyses. During the 1997–1998 examination, retinal photography from one randomly selected eye was graded for presence of early and late AMD using a modified Wisconsin AMD by Grading System. Depressive symptoms were assessed via a modified version of the Centers for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scale annually from 1989 through 1997–1998. Depressive symptoms were defined as a CES-D score of > 9 (top quartile of CES-D score) at the 1997–1998 examination. Results: There were 338 (15.6%) individuals with early AMD and 29 (1.3%) with late AMD. Among them, 368 (16.8%) persons had depressive symptoms at the 1997–1998 examination. Depressive symptoms were not associated with early AMD (multivariable adjusted odds ratio [OR]: 0.97; 95% confidence intervals [CI]: 0.69–1.36) or late AMD (OR: 1.15; 95% CI: 0.38–3.46). Including persons using anti-depressive medications did not alter these associations (OR: 0.98; 95% CI: 0.74–1.32 for early AMD and OR: 0.97; 95% CI: 0.35–2.67 for late AMD). There was no association in multinomial logistic regression models of increasing quartiles of the CES-D scores with early or late AMD status. Conclusions: Our study did not find an association between early AMD and depressive symptoms in older people.