United States: Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have made an exciting discovery that is a simple daily supplement might help protect the eyesight of people with late-stage dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
This new study, published in the journal Ophthalmology, gives hope to millions of older adults around the world who suffer from this serious eye condition.
Age related Macular Degeneration
This a very common type of eye condition and problem related to inner part of your eye which affects the central part of your vision and it’s like a dark an blurry kind of dark spot which interrupts your vision, like it will come in between of what you are looking at and really making it difficult to read or recognize the faces and it can also make it extremely dangerous to drive. The condition develops as we grow forward and hence the name “age-related.”
There are two main types of AMD which is wet and dry the dry form is really more common and progresses more slowly and in its early intermediate stages small yellow deposits called drusen form in the retina and the light-sensitive tissue at the back of your eye.
As this disease advances to its late stage and some areas of the retina can start to waste away creating what the doctors call “Geographic atrophy’
How Scientists Discovered This:
The research team already looked at eye scans from 1,209 eyes of 891 participants in the AREDS2 study and almost 392 eyes of 318 participants in the original AREDS study.
All these people had developed dry AMD.
Using these particular scans, the researchers calculated where the areas of geographic atrophy were located in each person’s eye and how quickly these areas were growing. They paid special attention to how these dead zones were expanding towards the fovea — the central part of the retina accountable for our sharpest, most detailed vision.
What did the team found?
The team has found out that most people whose geographic atrophy started away from the fovea, taking the supplements slowed down the spread of the dead zones towards the fovea by about almost 55 percent over an average of the three year.