Half of AMD-study participants have 20/40 or better vision after 5.5 years

The current study followed up with CATT (Comparison of AMD Treatments Trials) participants between March 2014 and 2015, an average of 5.5 years after enrolment in the trial. After two years on their randomly-assigned drug (Lucentis or Avastin), participants were free to work with their eye-care providers to choose their own course of therapy.The study, which was presented at the Association for Vision and Research in Ophthalmology meeting in Seattle, also found that during that 3.5-year period, more than half received at least one treatment with a drug or therapy other than the drug assigned to th. The investigators obtained visual acuity measurents for 647 of 914 participants who were still living.After five years, 50 per cent of participants had 20/40 vision or better, 20 per cent had 20/200 vision or worse, and the rest were in between.The study also found that after five years, participants assigned to Lucentis during the trial had a higher rate of strokes and heart attacks (7.6 percent) than those assigned to Avastin (4.5 percent), but the authors said, With most patients changing drugs over time, the ability to identify differential safety effects of the two drugs is compromised. Because of the absence of any difference when the history of drug exposure was certain, we do not believe that the difference in events observed when a large portion of patients were not receiving ranibizumab are meaningful. The current study followed up with CATT (Comparison of AMD Treatments Trials) participants between March 2014 and 2015, an average of 5.5 years after enrolment in the trial. After two years on their randomly assigned drug (Lucentis or Avastin), participants were free to work with their eye care providers to choose their own course of therapy.