Estimation of disease onset for patients with geographic atrophy due to age-related macular degeneration

Introduction: Patients of the longitudinal FAM Study receive a follow-up after the diagnosis of AMD. The patient's natural course of geographic atrophy (GA) is observed and related to lifestyle factors. Since patients are recruited after disease onset it is of interest to estimate the patient's age at disease onset and its link to risk factors. Material and Methods: Individual GA time courses are modelled by linear mixed effect models which allow to fit linear and non-linear curves and to extrapolate the individual GA time course to the time of onset for each patient eye. Linear or quadratic time course models r…