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Omega-3 May Prevent Age-Related Sight Loss
Highly Beneficial For Supporting Eye Health...
Increased Intakes of Omega-3 Fatty Acids May Reduce The Risk of
Developing Age-Related Blindness by 30 Per Cent, Says a New Study
From The US National Eye Institute.
A
subsection of the Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS) supported the
beneficial effects of omega-3 consumption for preventing age-related
macular
degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in the over 50s.
"These
results may guide the development of low-cost and easily implemented
preventive interventions for progression to advanced age-related
macular
degeneration," reported the researchers.
Eyes on AMD
AMD
(age-related Macular Degeneration) is a degenerative retinal disease
that causes central vision loss and leaves only peripheral vision. It
is the leading
cause of legal blindness for people over 55 years of age
in the Western world,
according to AMD Alliance International.
Despite
the fact that approximately 25 to 30 million people worldwide are
affected by AMD, awareness of the condition is low, says the Alliance.
And as
the generation of Baby Boomers gets older, the Alliance expects
incidence to
be on the rise and triple by 2025.
There are two
types of AMD - wet and dry. Wet AMD occurs when blood vessels
grow abnormally beneath the macular (neovascular AMD). The blood vessels
eventually leaks and the macular is scarred, obscuring vision.
Dry
AMD occurs when normal tissue in the macula slowly disappears. This
results
in a pale area of the macular called central geographic atrophy.
Increased
intakes of omega-3 fatty acids may reduce the risk of both wet and dry
AMD by 35 and 32 per cent, respectively, according to findings
published online
in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Valuable Healthy Eye Benefits of Omega-3's
It
is known that omega-3 fatty acids, and particularly DHA, play an
important role
in the layer of nerve cells in the retina, and studies
have already reported that
omega-3 may protect against the onset of AMD.
Indeed, a meta-analysis published in the June 2008 issue of the Archives of
Ophthalmology found that a high intake of omega-3 fatty acids and fish may
reduce the
risk of AMD by up to 38 per cent. Scientists from the University of
Melbourne in Australia reported that the benefits were most pronounced
against
late (more advanced) AMD, while eating fish twice a week was associated with
a reduced risk of both early and late AMD.
The
new study supports these earlier findings. The researchers looked at a
sub-section of 1,837 people participating in the phase 3 Age-Related
Eye
Disease Study (AREDS). All the participants were considered to be
at a
moderate-to-high risk of advanced AMD.
Over 12 years of
study, the researchers found that intakes of omega-3, estimated
using a
food-frequency questionnaire, were related to both wet and dry AMD risk.
Significantly,
the participants with the highest omega-3 intakes, had a 30 per cent
lower risk of developing both types than people with the lowest intakes.
"The
12-year incidence of central geographic atrophy and neovascular AMD
in
participants at moderate-to-high-risk of these outcomes was lowest for
those
reporting the highest consumption of omega-3 fatty acids,"
concluded the researchers.
An earlier study partly funded by the
National Eye Institute noted lower levels of
inflammatory molecules,
such as prostaglandin E2 and leukotriene B4, and higher
levels of
anti-inflammatory molecules, such as prostaglandin D2 (American Journal
of Pathology, Vol. 175, pp.799-807).
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