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Volume 10 Supplement 1

16th Scientific Symposium of the Austrian Pharmacological Society (APHAR)

Does VEGF polymorphism play a role in the treatment success with VEGF inhibitors in patients with CNV?

BMC Pharmacologyvolume 10, Article number: A38 (2010) | Download Citation

Background

Along with risk factors like smoking, hypertension, atherosclerosis and low choroidal blood flow, genetic susceptibility is a primary contributor to the development and progression of wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is a central angiogenic regulator and there is general agreement now that it is one of the most important triggers for the progression of neovascular AMD. In the present study we tested the hypothesis that VEGF gene polymorphisms play a role in the treatment success with VEGF inhibitors in patients with CNV.

Methods

One-hundred-sixty-two eyes of 143 patients with neovascular AMD who were scheduled for their first treatment with intravitreally administered ranibizumab were included in this trial. All patients were aged over 50 years and had angiographically verified neovascular AMD. Blood from the finger pad was collected on blood cards for genotyping for the VEGF polymorphisms rs1413711, rs3025039, rs2010963, rs833061, rs699947, rs3024997 and rs1005230. At each follow up visit, visual acuity was reassessed and an ophthalmic examination was carried out. The number of retreatments as well as the visual acuity outcome was analyzed in dependence of the VEGF polymorphisms.

Results

The included patients were reinjected with ranibizumab 2 to 19 times, resulting in a total treatment period of 42 to 1182 days. Neither the number of retreatments nor the visual acuity outcome was associated with any of the studied haplotypes.

Conclusions

The success of anti VEGF treatment is not dependent on VEGF gene polymorphisms.

Author information

Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Pharmacology, Medical University of Vienna, 1090, Vienna, Austria

    • Agnes Boltz
    • , Stefan Palkovits
    • , Manuel Ruiß
    • , Gerhard Garhöfer
    •  & Leopold Schmetterer

  2. Department of Ophthalmology, Medical University of Vienna, 1090, Vienna, Austria

    • Günther Weigert

  3. Department of Ophthalmology, Medical University of Graz, 8036, Graz, Austria

    • Martin Weger
    •  & Yosuf El-Shabrawi

  4. Department of Ophthalmology, University of Heidelberg, 69120, Mannheim, Germany

    • Jost Jonas

  5. Center of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna, 1090, Vienna, Austria

    • Leopold Schmetterer

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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Agnes Boltz.

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Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Keywords

  • Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor
  • Ranibizumab
  • Macular Degeneration
  • Polymorphism Rs1413711
  • Ophthalmic Examination

BMC Pharmacology

ISSN: 1471-2210