Family Studies of Eye Traits

The Beaver Dam Eye Study was designed to determine the long-term incidence and causes of cataract, age-related maculopathy (ARM), retinopathy, and impaired vision. Age-related macular degeneration and cataract are leading causes of loss of vision in the United States. In Beaver Dam, preliminary analyses indicate that in those people who were 75+ years of age at the baseline examination, 72% developed nuclear cataract, 39% developed cortical cataract, 22% developed posterior subcapsular cataract (PSC); 37% developed early ARM (large soft indistinct drusen, retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) depigmentation, and increased retinal pigment); 10% developed signs of late ARM (exudative macular degeneration and geographic atrophy); 37% developed some impairment of vision; and 6% developed severely impaired vision by the 10-year follow-up. Thus, these are common problems in older persons. Because people 75 years of age and older are the most rapidly growing segment of the population with an estimated increase of over 60% in the next 25 years, these problems pose a societal burden due to the large number of older persons they will affect. Additionally, we have observed substantial familial aggregation for several of these traits: ARM, nuclear cataract, cortical cataract and ocular refraction. The primary goal of this proposal is to perform linkage analysis on data collected as part of the Beaver Dam eye study. NHGRI investigators will be involved in the analysis of coded data only. Dr. Bailey-Wilson may provide financial support to help cover the cost of DNA extraction from her budgets but NO samples will be sent to NHGRI. All NHGRI effort on this study will be funded through Dr. Bailey-Wilson s intramural budget. In addition to the data from the Beaver Dam Eye study, we will also analyze previously existing data on glaucoma, intraocular pressure and cup-disc ratio from the Framingham Eye Study (FES) which is a substudy of the well known cohort study called the Framingham Heart Study (FHS). We will perform both linkage and association analysis of these data for comparison to the results found in the BDES data.