Progress in the study of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs as an adjunctive therapy for wet age-related macular degeneration

Intravitreous injection of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) inhibition is the main method of wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) treatment. The biggest drawback of this regimen is the high cost, which make poor people lose the treatment opportunity, and repeated drug injection, which increases the incidence of a lot of complications. Therefore, how to decrease the number of drug administration is the most urgent problem to solve. Non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAID) have the anti-inflammation and anti-angiogenesis effects. Previous studies have shown that NSAID as an adjunctive therapy of anti-VEGF drugs for AMD can improve the treatment effect, reduce the times of intravitreous injection of VEGF drugs, and reduce the central macular thickness. Thus, the mechanism of NSAID for CNV treatment and related progress in animal experiments and clinical trials were reviewed in this paper, in order to raise concerns of more ophthalmologist about this auxiliary treatment and to promote further researches. Key words: Age-related macular degeneration; Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs; Bromfenac; Nepafenac; Vascular endothelial growth factor