ARVO 2025: Nitish Mehta, MD, provides real-world insights from aflibercept 8 mg for treatment-naive diabetic macular oedema

Editors from the Eye Care Network are onsite at this year's Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah. During the conference, we spoke with Nitish Mehta, MD, an assistant professor at New York University Langone Health in New York, NY. He shared highlights from his research, which documented real-world results of aflibercept 8 mg for patients with diabetic macular oedema (DMO).

"In the PHOTON trial, aflibercept 8 mg achieved non-inferiority visual acuity outcomes, with fewer injections to aflibercept 2 mg, in patients with diabetic macular oedema through 96 weeks," he said. "Real-world evidence for the use of 8 mg [aflibercept] could also be very helpful for our clinical practices."

The cohort study Dr. Mehta presented aimed to describe real-world outcomes in treatment-naïve patients with DMO. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria to data from the IRIS Registry and Vestrum Health database, investigators had data from approximately 2,113 eyes.

"Injection intervals were assessed in eyes that had at least two injections in the initial dosing phase, and in eyes that had at least one injection in the post initial dosing phase," he said. Visual acuity change from initiation to 30 days post-loading was assessed where the data was available.

"On average, patients with treatment naïve [DMO] achieved injection intervals of around 75 days," Dr. Mehta said. "That's around 11 weeks with aflibercept 8 mg."

Additional analyses, with longer follow-up periods, are ongoing, he added, and will assess the long durability and visual outcomes for patients with treatment-naïve DMO.