April 16, 2026
2 min read
Key takeaways:
- Aflibercept 8 mg improved injection intervals in eyes with wet AMD that switched from aflibercept 2 mg.
- Patients who were treatment naive experienced vision improvements.
WAIKOLOA, Hawaii — Aflibercept 8 mg improved injection intervals in previously treated eyes with wet age-related macular degeneration while improving vision in treatment-naive eyes, according to a speaker at Retina 2026.
Using the IRIS Registry, Theodore Leng, MD, MS, FACS, and colleagues explored real-world outcomes for Eylea HD (aflibercept 8 mg, Regeneron) by investigating patients who were either treatment naive (2,052 eyes) or who were switched to treatment with aflibercept 8 mg from Eylea (aflibercept 2 mg, Regeneron) (11,284 eyes). Primary outcomes included the last assigned injection interval for treatment-naive eyes, the change in the last recorded injection intervals after the switch to aflibercept 8 mg among eyes that switched treatments, and changes in visual acuity from treatment initiation to the last observed aflibercept 8 mg injection for both groups, Leng said during his presentation. The initial loading phase was defined as the first three injections or the first 90 days of treatment.
Image: Thomas Cavallaro | Healio
“What we found in the treatment-naive patients first was that patients gained on average between four and five letters, depending on whether they got the full loading dose in the first 90 days or not,” Leng told Healio. “If they didn’t have the loading phase as per the label, they gained four letters of vision at the 6-month outcome mark.”
The median last injection interval among the treatment-naive eyes was approximately 12 weeks overall after initiation of 8 mg treatment, he told Healio. For eyes that switched treatments, the median increase in injection intervals was approximately 2 weeks while visual acuity remained unchanged, regardless of the initial injection intervals before the switch.
Additionally, a sensitivity analysis of a subgroup that switched regimens found that those dosed every 7 weeks or longer instead of every 6 weeks or longer showed a median interval increase of about 3 weeks, with no meaningful differences otherwise, Leng said during the presentation.
Leng said that vision results were collected during routine clinical practice, which may result in more variability than in data collected in a clinical trial setting.
The study also included a subset of patients treated with two or more doses of aflibercept 2 mg before switching to aflibercept 8 mg, “which may not represent the wider population treated with aflibercept 8 mg,” Leng said during the presentation.
“In this real-world data study, we really see the effectiveness of aflibercept 8 mg for both treatment-naive eyes and eyes that switched, which gives us confidence to use these agents in our patients,” he told Healio.
Sources/Disclosures
Source:
Leng T. Real-world use of aflibercept 8 mg in eyes with neovascular age-related macular degeneration. Presented at: Retina 2026; Jan. 17-23, 2026; Waikoloa, Hawaii.
Disclosures:
Leng reports being a researcher for Regeneron.
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