Apelin-13: A Promising Biomarker for Age-Related Macular Degeneration?

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the value of serum apelin-13 levels in age-related macular degeneration patients. Methods: Patients with dry-type AMD, treatment-naive neovascular-type AMD and the healthy control group were included in this study. Patients diagnoses were confirmed with detailed fundus examination, optical cohorence tomography and fundus flourescein angiography findings. Central foveal thickness and subfoveal choroidal thickness were evaluated. Both serum apelin-13 and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) levels were measured by competitive-enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) principle. Results: A total of 84 patients, including 24 patients in the dry-type AMD group (group 1), 27 patients in the neovascular-type AMD (group 2) group and 33 in the control group (group 3) were included in the study. Mean BCVA were 76±4,5, 48,4±16,3, 83,4±3,09 ETDRS letters in groups 1, 2 and 3, respectively. Values of serum VEGF were 44.11±26.14 pg/mL, 56.53±53.77 pg/mL and 61.47±41.62 pg/mL in groups 1, 2 and 3, respectively (p=0.553, p=0.286, p=0.896, respectively). Values of serum apelin-13 were 586.47±167.56 pg/mL, 622.18±324.52 pg/mL, 379. 31±171.96 pg/mL in groups 1, 2 and 3, respectively (p=0.847, p=0.04, p≤0.001, respectively). There was a negative correlation between the value of serum apelin and visual acuity and choroid thickness. Conclusion: Serum apelin-13 were higher in both dry-type AMD patients and neovascular AMD patients compared to the control group. Further studies are needed.

VEGFA Haplotype and VEGF-A and VEGF-R2 Protein Associations with Exudative Age-Related Macular Degeneration

“…VEGF-A serum levels, as well as VEGFA SNPs, are widely studied in AMD patients. While we did not find any statistical differences in VEGF-A serum levels between the exudative AMD patients and controls, we confirmed results from several other studies which included total AMD patients or only exudative AMD patients, consisting of 27 to 71 samples per group in different populations [53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60]. Further studies revealed significantly elevated VEGF-A levels in exudative AMD patients compared to controls [61,62].…”