Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine researchers studied the ocular as well as systemic effects that three anti-VEGF therapies had on patients.
Pegatanib, ranibizumab and bevacizumab were all compared to patients who received no anti-VEGF treatments
Researchers evaluated specific studies from databases and focused on 16 randomized controlled trials that had a total of 6347 participants diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration. Patients who received any of the anti-VEGF treatments gained 15 or more letters of visual acuity compared to their counterparts who had not received any anti-VEGF therapies. In addition, the treated patient also had improvements in retinal thickness.
No trial directly compared pegaptanib versus another anti‚ÄêVEGF agent and followed participants for one year. However, when compared with control treatments, ranibizumab (Lucentis) and bevacizumab (Avastin) each yielded larger improvements in visual acuity outcomes than pegaptanib (Macugen). Of importance, the newest anti-VEGF medication that appears to have the longest activity, aflibercept (Eyelea), was not involved in this study.
