There is a novel association of gout with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in the elderly, according to a recent study. Researchers used the 5% Medicare claims data from 2006–12 for all beneficiaries who were enrolled in Medicare fee-for-service (Parts A, B) and not enrolled in a Medicare Advantage Plan, and resided in the US. People were censored at the occurrence of new diagnosis of AMD, death, or the end of study (December 31, 2012), whichever occurred first. They found:

• In this observational cohort study, of the 1,684,314 eligible people, 116,097 developed incident AMD (6.9%).
• Incidence rates of AMD per 1,000 person-years were 20.1 for people with gout and 11.7 for people without gout.
• In multivariable-adjusted analyses, a diagnosis of gout was significantly associated with a higher risk of incident AMD with a hazard ratio of 1.39.
• Other covariates significantly associated with higher hazards of incident AMD were older age, female gender, white race/ethnicity, and higher Charlson-Romano comorbidity index score.