Metabolic vulnerability, genetic susceptibility, and incident age-related eye diseases: a prospective cohort study.
Higher metabolic vulnerability index linked to greater risk of diabetic retinopathy
Metabolic vulnerability, genetic susceptibility, and incident age-related eye diseases: a prospective cohort study.
Metabolic dysregulation is increasingly recognized as a systemic process contributing to chronic disease development, yet prospective evidence linking integrated metabolic vulnerability to age-related eye diseases remains limited.
We investigated whether a biomarker-based metabolic vulnerability index (MVX) was associated with incident age-related ocular diseases and whether joint consideration of MVX and genetic susceptibility may help characterize relative risk patterns.
A prospective population-based cohort of 206,311 participants from the UK Biobank was analyzed.
higher metabolic strain score signals worse odds of retinopathy
During follow-up, 4,144 participants developed AMD, 13,574 cataract, 1,483 diabetic retinopathy, and 5,525 glaucoma.
In joint analyses, individuals with both high genetic risk and elevated MVX exhibited the greatest risks of AMD (HR = 2.32; 95% CI: 2.01-2.67), cataract (HR = 1.62; 95% CI: 1.49-1.76), and diabetic retinopathy (HR = 3.84; 95% CI: 2.91-5.06), compared with those with low genetic risk and low MVX.
These findings suggest that MVX may be relevant to population-level patterns of risk for several age-related eye diseases.
However, further studies are needed to determine whether MVX provides meaningful predictive value or clinical utility beyond conventional risk factors.