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Is There Link Between Age-Related Macular Degeneration And Heart Disease Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a disease caused by the deterioration of the central vision of the retina called macula. Macula is responsible for focusing central vision in the eye, and it controls the ability to read, drive a car, recognize faces or colors, and see objects in fine detail. AMD usually does not cause blindness but might cause severe vision problems. Symptoms of AMD may include worse or less clear vision; dark, blurry areas in the center of the vision; rarely, worse or different color perception. Being common among older adults, AMD is a major cause of partial blindness for people aged 50 years and over. About 2 percent of people in their 50s have AMD, and almost a third of people over 75 do. It is, however, not just age that raises the chances of getting the disease. Gene, race, gender, obesity, smoking, high blood pressure, and heart disease can all raise the risk of developing AMD. Family history of AMD may raise the risk of developing AMD. Caucasians have the highest risk of AMD, followed by Chinese and Hispanics/Latinos, and with the least risk, African Americans. About a third of Caucasians have a gene that is been linked to AMD. If one has light-colored eyes, he or she also have greater chances of developing dry AMD, possibly because light eyes do not deflect ultraviolet rays as well as dark eyes. About two-third of people with AMD are women, probably because women live longer than men.
In general, smokers have a risk of up to 4 times
as much as those who has never smoked. This may be due to the fact that smoking
lowers the amount of oxygen that goes to different parts of the body, including
the eyes. Similar to smoking, high blood pressure restricts the amount of oxygen
getting to the eyes that may increase the risk for AMD. For those who had a
stroke, angina (chest pain), or a heart attack, their risk for AMD may be 1.5
times as high as someone who has not had any of these problems. High cholesterol
levels may also raise the risk of AMD.
There are 2 types of AMD: dry and wet. People with dry AMD may have yellow deposits, called drusen, in their macula. A few small drusen may not cause changes in the vision. But as they grow bigger and more numerous, they might dim or distort the vision, especially when reading. As the condition gets worse, the light-sensitive cells in the macula get thinner and eventually die. In the atrophic form, one may have blind spots in the center of the vision. As that gets worse, he or she might lose central vision. For people with wet AMD, blood vessels grow from underneath their macula. These blood vessels leak blood and fluid into the retina. The vision is distorted so that straight lines look wavy. Patients may also have blind spots and loss of central vision. These blood vessels and their bleeding eventually form a scar, leading to permanent loss of central vision. Most people (about 85 to 90 percent) with AMD have dry form, but the dry AMD can progress to the wet AMD. Up to 5 percent of people who have dry AMD in both eyes will get wet AMD in a year, while 13 percent to 18 percent will get it in 3 years. Complications of AMD include vision loss, inability to drive, visual hallucinations and of course CVD. Since AMD shares some risk factors with cardiovascular disease (CVD, including heart disease and stroke), studies have found that those with AMD are at a higher chance of getting heart disease and stroke. In a paper published March 28, 2014 in Journal ‘PLoS ONE’, researchers suggested that early and late AMD are independent predictors of future CVD, and the association is much stronger for late AMD by using meta-analysis based on best-available evidence from prospective cohort studies.
Presently, there is no cure for AMD. Treatments
may just slow it down or keep one from losing too much of the vision. Options
may include anti-angiogenesis drugs; laser therapy; photodynamic laser therapy;
low vision aids; submacular surgery and retinal translocation. Date: February 20, 2020
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