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Vitamins May Prevent Eye Disease in the Elderly, Research Finds
By Rebecca Smith, The Telegraph
February 23, 2009
Women who took supplements had a 31 per cent lower risk of a condition called age-related macular degeneration of any severity and a 41 per cent lower risk of significant AMD.
The study carried out in America randomly assigned 5,442 women aged 40 or older who were already ar risk of the condition because they had heart disease or other problems, to take a combination of folic acid, vitamin B6 and vitamin B12 or to take a dummy pill.
The treatment continued for seven years and in that time there were 137 new cases of AMD. Of these 55 cases, 26 of them significant occurred in the women on the vitamin supplements while there were 82 cases in those on the placebo, 44 of which were significant.
Lead author William Christen, of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston said: "The beneficial effect of treatment began to emerge at approximately two years of follow-up and persisted throughout the trial.
"The trial findings reported herein are the strongest evidence to date in support of a possible beneficial effect of folic acid and B vitamin supplements in AMD prevention.
"From a public health perspective, this is particularly important because persons with early AMD are at increased risk of developing advanced AMD, the leading cause of severe, irreversible vision loss."
The only way to reduce the risk of AMD known currently is not to smoke.
It is thought the supplements reduce levels of an amino acid called homocysteine which can damage the lining of blood vessels and make blood more likely to clot.
The vitamins make also have an antioxidant effect to improve the blood vessel functioning in the eye, the authors wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
AMD is a condition where the cells at the back of the eye deteriorate and cause the central vision to become blurred or distorted.
There are two forms of the disease, 'dry' which is more common and milder and 'wet' which can lead to severe vision loss.
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