Increased risk of parkinson disease following a diagnosis of neovascular age-related macular degeneration: A retrospective cohort study

Purpose To investigate the risk for Parkinson disease during a 3-year follow-up period after a diagnosis of neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD) using a nationwide population-based dataset in Taiwan. Design A retrospective matched-cohort study. Methods We identified 877subjects with neovascular AMD as the study cohort and randomly selected 8770 subjects for a comparison cohort. Each subject was individually followed for a 3-year period to identify those who subsequently developed Parkinson disease. Stratified Cox proportional hazard regressions were performed as a means of comparing the 3-year risk of subsequent Parkinson disease between the study and comparison cohorts. Results The incidence rate of Parkinson disease was 5.32 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 3.03-8.72) per 1000 person-years in patients with neovascular AMD and 2.09 (95% CI: 1.59-2.70) per 1000 person-years in comparison patients. The log-rank test indicated that subjects with neovascular AMD had a significantly lower 3-year Parkinson disease-free survival rate than comparison subjects (P