rs4711751 and rs1999930 are not associated with neovascular age-related macular degeneration or polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy in the Chinese population.

PURPOSE

rs1999930 and rs4711751 have recently been identified as novel variants associated with advanced age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in populations of European ancestry. We aimed to investigate whether these two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were associated with neovascular AMD (nAMD) or with polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy (PCV), a variant of AMD in Asians, using a Chinese case-control study.

METHODS

A total of 900 subjects, including 300 controls, 300 cases with nAMD and 300 cases with PCV, were included in the present study. Genomic DNA was extracted from venous blood leukocytes. The allelic variants of rs1999930 and rs4711751 were determined by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry. The differences in allele distribution between cases and controls were tested by a χ(2) test, with additional adjustments for age and gender using logistic regression. The statistical power was also calculated. Values of p < 0.05 were considered statistically significant.

RESULTS

No statistically significant association was observed between the two polymorphisms of nAMD or PCV phenotype (p > 0.05 for all comparisons). The difference remained insignificant after correction for age and gender (p > 0.05 for all comparisons). The statistical powers to detect the association between these two SNPs and nAMD or PCV range from 0.05 to 0.36, assuming conventional levels of statistical significance.

CONCLUSIONS

In the present study, we could not replicate the reported association of these two SNPs and either nAMD or PCV in a Chinese population, suggesting that they are unlikely to be a major AMD and PCV susceptibility gene locus in the Chinese population. Considering the low power value, a large sample size is required to draw more reliable conclusions.