Figure 5

Relationship of anti-retinal autoantibodies in different stages of AMD with smoking and arthritis. (A) Prevalence of anti-retinal autoantibodies in men and women who never smoked, are current smokers, or who stopped smoking in AMD and control subjects. High anti-retinal seropositivity is observed in never smoking females that dropped 2 folds in ever smoker female patients. In contrast, smoking or discontinuation of smoking is associated with an increased frequency of AAbs in men regardless of the stage of disease. Never = never smoking female/male; Current = currently smoking female/male; Ever = former smoking female/male. (B) Differences in anti-retinal autoantibody association in female and male with AMD and arthritis and compared to the age-matched unaffected controls. Bars represent a percent of seropositive subjects in each subgroup. Note that female with intermediate AMD had 4 times more AAbs than men, in contrast men with late AMD-NV had 2 times higher frequency of anti-retinal antibodies. Horizontal lines show statistical significance between groups, p < 0.05 (One-way analysis of variance, Bonferroni’s multiple comparison test).