AMD Incidence and Prevalence

Incidence and Prevalence

A recent meta-analysis found that AMD is the third most common cause of visual impairment (blindness and moderate or severe vision impairment – MSVI) after uncorrected refractive error and cataract in the global population in 2015.¹ Globally 8·41 million people were estimated to have MSVI as a result of AMD in 2015; this figure is expected to rise to 8.8 million people by 2020. AMD accounted for 5.64% of cases of legal blindness worldwide in 2015 (1.96 million cases of legal blindness). The proportion of blindness caused by AMD was highest in regions with older populations (high-income regions), where anything from 10% to >14% of cases of blindness were attributable to AMD.

AMD is the leading cause of vision loss in people aged ≥50 years in developed countries. Global prevalence estimates (% of people with the disease in the global population) indicate that AMD affects 9% of people aged between 45–85 years worldwide. Globally, it is estimated that approximately 196 million people will have AMD by 2020, and this number is expected to increase to 288 million by 2040 as a result of population ageing.²

In Europe, it is estimated that the number of people affected by late AMD will almost double from 2.7 million in 2013 to 4.8 million in 2040.³

Estimated incidence rates of AMD (number of new cases in a population in a specified time period) vary between studies. A study estimating the incidence of late-stage AMD in American whites reported an annual incidence of 3.5 per 1000 aged ≥50 years, equivalent to 293,000 new cases per year.⁴Another study performed in the United Kingdom population, reported the annual incidence of late AMD as 4.1 per 1000 women and 2.6 per 1000 men.⁵

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