MACULAR DEGENERATION
Report #7235
Doctors have developed new treatments for wet macular degeneration that affects more than 300,000 people in North America and eventually causes many to lose their vision.
The blindness is caused by blood vessels growing into and leaking blood to cause scarring in the end of the nerve that carries vision from your eyes to your brain. Eugene de Juan at Johns Hopkins reported that he can detach and move the end of the eye nerve and then burn away the blood vessels with a laser (1). Dr. Dennis Marcus of the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta reports destroying the blood vessels with radiation that is less likely to damage the eye nerve (2). Joan Miller of Harvard Medical School reports that she has injected chemicals that are activated by light into the bloodstream (3). These chemicals circulate to the blood vessels in the back of the eye. Then she uses a laser that specifically attacks these chemicals in the blood vessels and destroys the blood vessels before they can grow into and destroy the eye nerve.
Who gets macular degeneration? Those who are most likely to suffer from arteriosclerosis and eat a diet that is loaded with fat and low in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and beans (4). Macular degeneration is associated with low blood levels of caretenoids and antioxidant vitamins that are found abundantly in fruits and vegetables (5).
By Gabe Mirkin, M.D., for CBS Radio News
1,2,3) Presented at the Los Angeles meeting of Research to prevent Blindness, a New
York-base nonprofit group September 20, 1997. 4) JR Vingerling, I Dielemans, ML Bots, A Hofman, DE Grobbee, PTVM Dejong. Age-related
macular degeneration is associated with atherosclerosis: The Rotterdam study. American
Journal of Epidemiology 142: 4 (AUG 15 1995):404-409. 5) DM Snodderly. Evidence for protection against age-related macular degeneration by
carotenoids and antioxidant vitamins. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 62: 6
Suppl.(DEC 1995):S1448-S1461.
Reported 10/6/97; Checked 9/5/05