Age related macular degeneration

A scene as it might appear to a person with ARMD

Age related macular degeneration (ARMD) is the leading cause of blindness for people over 50. An informative overview about eye health, focusing on glaucoma and macular degeneration, is online here on the nonprofit BrightFocus Foundation website.

ARMD is a complex disease with associated mutations in many genes. A 2016 study analyzing 16,144 patients and 17,832 controls identified 52 independently associated common and rare variants distributed across 34 genes, and concluded that the hunt for additional genes will probably be fruitful but will require extremely large sample sizes.[PMID 26691988]

omim summarizes current research

Many different SNPs can trigger the disease [PMID 11673412], including:

rs11200638, a SNP in the HTRA1 gene, claimed to have the strongest influence [PMID 17053108]

rs1061170 and rs800292, two SNPs in the CFH gene that some have claimed account for up to 78% of the population attributable risk [PMID 16849663, PMID 18316707]