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Cholesterol-lowering drugs can prevent vision loss!

A new study shows that statins may reduce the risk of age-related vision loss.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is one of the leading causes of severe visual impairment in the elderly.

A new study has found that regular use of cholesterol-lowering drugs and control of type 2 diabetes can reduce the risk of degenerative eye diseases by more than one-fifth.

During the study, the researchers collected information from 14 studies evaluating the effect of drugs on the risk of developing AMD.

Experts led by a team from the University Hospital Bonn in Germany looked at studies involving almost 40,000 people from the UK, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Portugal and Russia.

Participants were over 50 years of age and were taking at least one type of medication to: lower cholesterol, including statins; diabetes control – including insulin; To control inflammation – other than steroids; or a medicine to treat movement disorders caused by a neurodegenerative disease.

About 9,332 people in the study were diagnosed with AMD.

The researchers found that people who took cholesterol-lowering medications had a 15% lower risk of developing AMD than those who did not take those medications.

Meanwhile, people taking medication to control diabetes had a 22% lower risk.

For other types of drugs taken by study participants, no such associations were found.

According to the NHS, AMD is a common condition that does not lead to total blindness, but can make it difficult to perform activities, including reading and recognizing faces.

Charities estimate that around 600,000 people in the UK and 11 million people in the US have AMD.

It occurs as a result of damage to the macula, the central part of the retina, the thin layer of tissue at the back of the eye that converts light into signals to the brain.

“Our study indicates an association between systemic use of lipid-lowering (LLD) and antidiabetic drugs with a reduction in the prevalence of AMD in several European cohort studies,” the researchers said. They stressed that more research is needed to explore the results.

The results were published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.

Source: Daily Mail

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