We genotyped 2067 Caucasian subjects from the Age-Related Eye Disease Study cohort for commonly associated AMD SNPs, including those in CFH (rs1061170, rs1410996, and rs3766404), ARMS2 (rs10490924), and C3 (rs2230199) using either a Sequenom MassARRAY MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer or using Taqman genotyping reagents.
Variants at chromosome 1q32 (in the region of CFH) and 10q26 (LOC387715/ARMS2) account for a large part of the genetic risk to AMD and have been validated in numerous studies.
English-language studies assessing AREDS supplement response in patients with AMD in relation to complement factor H gene ( CFH) and age-related maculopathy susceptibility 2 gene ( ARMS2) risk alleles were evaluated.
These results suggest that calcium, ARMS2 genotype, C. pneumonia infection, and age are significant factors in the development of the early stages of AMD.
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a complex multigenic disorder and the most common cause of vision loss in the elderly, is associated with polymorphisms in the LOC387715/ARMS2 and HTRA1 genes on 10q26.
The AMD-associated CFH 402H risk variant is significantly associated with the absence of RMD but enhanced risk for RMD is conferred by the ARMS2 69S AMD risk allele.
These population-based data provide estimates of the long-term risk of the incidence and progression of AMD and its lesions by age and genetic risk alleles for CFH and ARMS2.
Because A2E accumulation in the RPE is associated with pathogenesis of both Stargardt disease and age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in humans, deletion of Abca4 was introduced into Atg7(flox/flox);VMD2-rtTA-cre+ mice to investigate the role of autophagy during A2E accumulation.
Increased risk of RPD formation is conveyed by genetic variants known to increase risk of AMD development, including complement factor H, age-related maculopathy susceptibility 2, and high-temperature requirement A serine peptidase 1; however, to date, no genetic factor has been found to predispose to RPD independent of those that carry risks for AMD.
This review examines the recent progress and current uncertainty on the genetic and functional analyses of the 10q26 locus in AMD with a focus on ARMS2 and HTRA1.
Intriguingly, alleles in ARMS2 and CFH that confer risk of AMD may be protective for cCSC, and alleles in CFH that are protective for AMD confer risk for cCSC.
Female sex and the presence of both risk alleles of CFH-rs1061170 or ARMS2-rs10490924 were independently associated with early AMD incidence, whereas current smoking and presence of ≥1 risk allele of CFH-rs1061170 or ARMS2-rs10490924 were associated with late AMD incidence.
We investigated two SNPs in C2 and two in CFB in independent case-control and family cohorts of white subjects and found rs547154, an intronic SNP in C2, to be significantly associated with ARM in both our case-control (P-value 0.00007) and family data (P-value 0.00001).
We demonstrate, by evaluating 45 tag SNPs spanning HTRA1, PLEKHA1, and predicted gene LOC387715/ARMS2, that rs10490924 SNP alone, or a variant in strong linkage disequilibrium, can explain the bulk of association between the 10q26 chromosomal region and AMD.