Research suggests number of AMD cases to increase substantially.

Medscape (4/13, Lowry) reported that, according to a study published in the April issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology, “the number of cases of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) will increase substantially between 2010 and 2050 in the United States as the population ages,” but “the use of antioxidant vitamins and other new therapies can reduce the resulting visual impairment and blindness by as much as 35 percent.” To reach this conclusion, researchers from the Research Triangle Institute and the Vision Health Cost-Effectiveness Study Group “simulated cases of early AMD,” choroidal neovascularization, “geographic atrophy,” and “AMD-attributable visual impairment and blindness using…five treatment scenarios.” In the team’s model, “cases of early AMD increased from 9.1 million in 2010 to 17.8 million in 2050 across all scenarios.” Notably, “the use of vitamins did alter the number of forecasted cases of advanced AMD, reducing the number of cases by approximately 25 percent in scenarios three and five.”