Original articleEffects of Age on Optical Coherence Tomography Measurements of Healthy Retinal Nerve Fiber Layer, Macula, and Optic Nerve Head
Section snippets
Subjects
Healthy subjects from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Eye Center were enrolled in the study. The study was approved by the institutional review board ethics committee of the University of Pittsburgh and adhered to the Declaration of Helsinki and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act regulations. Informed consent was obtained from all participants.
Inclusion criteria were best corrected visual acuity of 20/40 or better, refractive error within ±6.0 Diopters, no media
Results
A total of 226 eyes of 124 healthy subjects were enrolled in this study. Of the 124 subjects, 80 were women and 44 were men; 103 were Caucasian, 12 were African American, 8 were Asian, and 1 was Hispanic. The average ± standard deviation age was 47.5±15.9 years, and ranged from 18 to 85 years. The distribution of ages is presented in Figure 1.
The population average ± standard deviation of overall RNFL thickness was 100.8±10.5 μm, overall macular thickness was 249.0±11.3 μm, and rim area was
Discussion
There was statistically significant detectable loss of RNFL associated with age in most of the regional thicknesses of the peripapillary RNFL and macula, except for the temporal quadrant RNFL and corresponding 8, 9, and 10 o'clock sectors. The slopes in the sectoral areas varied around the macula and the ONH, both in terms of absolute and normalized values. As would be expected, the overall mean RNFL and macular thickness slopes fall in the middle of the slopes of the sectoral parameters and
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Manuscript no. 2008-1216.
Financial Disclosure(s): The author(s) have made the following disclosure(s):
Dr. Wollstein received research funding from Carl Zeiss Meditec and Optovue. Drs. Wollstein, Ishikawa, and Schuman receive royalties for intellectual property licensed by the University of Pittsburgh to Biopigen. Drs. Schuman and Fujimoto receive royalties for intellectual property licensed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology to Carl Zeiss Meditec. Dr. Fujimoto is a scientific advisor and has stock options with Optovue.
Supported by the National Institutes of Health R01-EY13178-09, R01-EY11289-23, P30-EY008098, The Eye and Ear Foundation (Pittsburgh, PA), and an unrestricted grant from Research to Prevent Blindness.
The first 2 authors (KRS and GW) contributed equally to the preparation of the manuscript.