Retinal vascular flow and choroidal thickness in eyes with early age-related macular degeneration with reticular pseudodrusen

BACKGROUND: To investigate the characteristics of retinal vessels and retinal thickness in eyes with early age-related macular degeneration (AMD) with or without reticular pseudodrusen. METHODS: We retrospectively evaluated the clinical history and optical coherence tomography (OCT) and OCT angiography images of consecutive patients with early AMD. We calculated the retinal vessel densities of the superficial and deep capillary plexus with the ImageJ software (National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA) and investigated the relationship with mean retinal thickness and subfoveal choroidal thickness. RESULTS: We included 135 early AMD eyes and classified 60 of them into a reticular pseudodrusen group and 75 into a non-reticular pseudodrusen group. The vascular densities of the superficial and deep capillary plexus in the reticular pseudodrusen group (32.35% ± 3.67 and 26.71% ± 2.88%) were not different from those of the non-reticular pseudodrusen group (33.18% ± 2.2% and % 27.43 ± 1.79%; P = 0.546 and P = 0.318, respectively). The retinal thickness of the reticular pseudodrusen group (287.31 μm ± 24.36 μm) did not differ from that of the non-reticular pseudodrusen group (294.27 μm ± 20.71 μm; P = 0.493), while subfoveal choroidal thickness in the reticular pseudodrusen group (158.13 μm ± 42.53 μm) was lower than that in the non-reticular pseudodrusen group (237.89 μm ± 60.94 μm; P < 0.001). Multivariate analysis revealed that lower vascular density of the superficial capillary plexus and subfoveal choroidal thickness were associated with retinal thinning in reticular pseudodrusen group (P = 0.003 and P = 0.036) and older age was associated with retinal thickness in the non-reticular pseudodrusen group (P = 0.005). CONCLUSIONS: Retinal thinning in early AMD patients with reticular pseudodrusen was accompanied by choroidal and retinal vascular loss, which suggests a possible linkage of retinal thinning with vascular alterations. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12886-018-0866-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.