All middle-aged people should use sun glasses and supplements to protect against eye disease
October 21st, 2008
Middle-aged people should wear sun glasses and take antioxidant supplements to protect their eyes from age-related macular degeneration (AMD) – the most common cause of blindness in the Western world – even if they have no signs of the disease, researchers say.
The comment comes after a study showed that people who have low levels of antioxidants in their blood are 40 per cent more likely to have wet AMD - where blood vessels start to grow behind the retina – if they have been exposed to a lot of blue light.
Astrid Fletcher, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and team interviewed 4753 people about their lifetime exposure to sunlight and took close-range photos of their eyes using a method called fundus photography.
The participants included 2182 people with early stage AMD, 101 with wet, or neovascular, AMD and 2117 people without the eye condition.
The researchers also took blood samples from the participants to measure levels of antioxidants in their blood.
People who showed low levels of a combination of antioxidants were more vulnerable to blue light than those with deficits in just one antioxidant, the researchers found.
Those with low combined levels of antioxidants - such as vitamins C and E and zeaxanthin - were 3.7 times more likely than other people to develop wet AMD if they had been exposed to a lot of blue light.
Fletcher and colleagues say they can’t be sure that sunlight exposure is causing the eye condition, but nevertheless warn people to be vigilant about the results.
They say in the journal Archives of Ophthalmology: ‘Our results suggest that people in the general population should use [eye] protection and follow dietary recommendations for the key antioxidant nutrients.’
The team adds that, given the lack of screening methods to detect people with early AMD, ‘we suggest that recommendations on ocular protection and diet target the general population, especially middle-aged people.’
