The authors gratefully thank the excellent supporting assistance of Lydia Mayerhofer, Magdalena Scharl, Josef Simon, and Sylvia Pfreintner. Moreover, we thank all study participants for contributing to the AugUR study.
Supported by grants from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF 01ER1206, BMBF 01ER1507 to I.M.H.), by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation; HE 3690/7-1 and HE 3690/5-1 to I.M.H., BR 6028/2-1 to C.B.), by the National Institutes of Health (NIH R01 EY RES 511967 to I.M.H.), and institutional budget (University of Regensburg). The sponsors or funding organizations had no role in the design or conduct of this research.
Author Contributions: C.B. conducted the project initiation and supervision, was the eye sub-study coordinator for AugUR, manuscript writing, statistical analysis, interpreting results, and grading of color fundus images. M.E.Z. conducted the data management and statistical analysis. J.H. performed the calculation of genetic risk score, and statistical analysis. H.H. provided manuscript writing, and ophthalmological expertise. K.J.S. was the AugUR study coordinator, project supervision, provided manuscript writing, statistical analysis, and interpreting the results. I.M.H. was the AugUR study Principal Investigator, project supervision, provided manuscript writing, and interpreting results. All authors contributed to the reviewing and editing of the manuscript.
Disclosure: C. Brandl, None; M.E. Zimmermann, None; J.M. Herold, None; H. Helbig, received honoraria for lectures and advisory boards unrelated to this work from Alcon (R), Allergan (R), Apellis (R), Bayer (R), Novartis (R), and Theapharm (R); K.J. Stark, None; I.M. Heid, Roche Diagnostics for a project related to AMD, but unrelated to this work presented here (F)