7.5-M people will go blind by 2020 due to age-related disease

By 2020, as many as 7.5 million people over 65 years old may suffer from vision loss due to age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

This grim scenario comes from Drs. Gisele Soubrane of the Clinique Opthamologique Universitaire de Creteil in France, and Neil M. Bressler of the Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the United States, in their report published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.

"AMD occurs most frequently in people above 50 years of age, with a strong increase in prevalence in people over 65 years of age. This rapid increase in AMD prevalence with age will probably pose a growing health problem for developed countries because of the increasing proportion of the population in older age groups. Data from the United Kingdom have shown that the number of new registrations of blindness due to AMD has increased by 30-40 percent in the past 50 years," they warned.

At present, AMD affects 30 million people worldwide and is the leading cause of blindness in people over 50, according to the AMD Alliance International, a non-profit alliance of international vision and seniors organizations.

AMD’s cause is unknown but it appears to be linked to smoking, light skin or eye color, hypertension, coronary artery disease, sun exposure and a diet low in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.

In AMD, the macula – a light-sensitive tissue at the center of the retina that provides clear central vision – is affected. As the disease worsens, central vision is lost, causing blindness.

Most people with AMD (90 percent) have the dry form of the disease that causes slow vision loss. The rest (10 percent) have the less common wet form that is characterized by the growth of abnormal blood vessels in the back of the eye that block vision. This causes severe vision loss in only two to three years.

Fortunately, there is hope for people suffering from the wet form of AMD. A new treatment called Visudyne (verteporfin for injection) was recently introduced by Novartis Healthcare Phils. Inc.

Visudyne is the first drug approved for this purpose and is considered a breakthrough since it slows the progression of vision loss. For more information, call Novartis Healthcare Phils. Inc. at 840-5667 or visit the Visudyne website at www.visudyne.com. PDT with Visudyne is available at the Eye Referral Center (c/o Linda Serenio at 525-9360 to 64).