Foveal and Macular Thickness in a Japanese Population: The Hisayama Study

Purpose: To examine factors associated with foveal thickness (FT) and macular thickness (MT) in Japanese persons from Hisayama. Methods: A total of 2216 healthy eyes of 1384 participants were analyzed. Each participant underwent comprehensive physical and ophthalmic examinations, the latter including optical coherence tomography (OCT). Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the relationship of various factors (race, age, sex, refractive error, axial length, diabetes mellitus, fasting plasma glucose levels, alcohol intake and smoking status) to FT (central 1-mm foveal area) and MT (central 3-mm foveal region). Results: Results of multiple linear regression analysis indicated that age was positively associated with FT (beta coefficient 0.214 mu m). FT was significantly smaller in women than men (beta coefficient -9.146 mu m). For both sexes, body height was positively correlated (beta coefficient 0.257 mu m), while refractive error and current smoking were negatively associated (beta coefficients -1910 mu m and -4.410 mu m, respectively) with FT. With respect to MT, there were negative associations between age, sex (female), and refractive error (beta coefficients -0.268 mu m, -4.815 mu m and -0.699 mu m, respectively). For both sexes, body height was positively correlated (beta coefficient 0.227 mu m), while hypertension and current smoking were negatively associated (beta coefficients -1.999 mu m and -2.758 mu m, respectively) with MT. Conclusions: Our results indicated that age, body height, refractive error, and current smoking were significantly associated with FT, whereas age, body height, refractive error, current smoking, and hypertension were significantly related to MT. Women had significantly smaller FT and MT than men.