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The following is a summary of “Effects of aspirin and omega-3 fatty acids on composite and subdomain scores from the NEI-VFQ-25 questionnaire: the ASCEND-Eye randomized controlled trial,” published in the November 2024 issue of Ophthalmology by Sammons et al. 

Researchers conducted a retrospective study to examine the impact of aspirin and omega-3 fatty acids (FAs) on visual function, as measured by the National Eye Institute’s Visual Function Questionnaire-25 (NEI-VFQ-25), in a subset of participants from the ASCEND-Eye sub-study.   

They analyzed ordinal NEI-VFQ-25 data using proportional odds regression with a 95% confidence interval to interpret the average effect size of randomization to each study treatment on composite and subdomain scores from the questionnaire.   

The results showed that 8,846 of 11,301 eligible participants completed the VFQ. Non-responders were older and had longer diabetes duration. Baseline characteristics were balanced between the treatment groups. Adherence to aspirin and omega-3 FAs was 79.3% and 88.4%, respectively. Neither aspirin nor omega-3 FAs significantly affected composite or subdomain NEI-VFQ-25 scores. The odds ratio for lower composite scores with aspirin vs placebo was 1.04 (95% CI 0.96-1.13, P=0.36), and for omega-3 FAs vs placebo was 1.01 (95% CI 0.93-1.09, P=0.87). Exploratory analyses showed no interaction effects between treatments on NEI-VFQ-25 scores. The impact of treatment allocation on lower subdomain scores was also non-significant for most subdomains, except for a potential chance finding in the vision-specific dependency subdomain with omega-3 FAs (P=0.04). The proportional odds assumption was upheld in most models, with an exception in the driving subdomain scores by omega-3 FAs allocation (P=0.01).  

Investigators concluded that the NEI-VFQ-25 analysis in ASCEND-Eye provided a large-scale assessment of vision-targeted health-related QoL in individuals with diabetes, with further observational analyses planned to identify associated clinical and demographic factors. 

Source: bmcophthalmol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12886-024-03741-x