The Potential Role of Dietary Antioxidant Capacity on Age-Related Macular Degeneration

Including eye health, nutrition plays a vital role for the sustainability of individuals health life. There is an increasing global concern about the issues related with eye health. In 2010, in order to take attention to these issues, World Health Organization (WHO) defined the main reasons of vision disorders as refraction defects of eye diseases (43 %), cataract (33 %), glaucoma (2 %), age-related macular degeneration (AMD) (1 %), diabetic retinopathy (1 %) and undetermined natural reasons (18 %). This report also stated the three biggest reasons of blindness as cataract (51 %), glaucoma (8 %) and AMD (5 %). AMD is a multi-factorial disease in which the genetic predisposition plays important role with environmental factors and metabolic conditions, except for age. Especially cigarette is the secondary important risk factor for dry-type AMD. In the Age Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS), it was stated that AMD prevalence is higher in white races, compared with races which are not white. At the same time, AREDS searched the effect of diet supplements on the progression of AMD disease. In terms of the patients followed for six years, it was reported that the formulation C and E vitamins, beta carotene and zinc decreased the progression risk of AMD from middle levels to advanced levels by 34 %. In AREDS-2 study completed in 2012, it was shown that the extraction of beta carotene from the formulation and the decrease of zinc did not affect the progression rate of the disease. In the group using beta carotene, including persons who were used to smoke but gave up at least one year ago, the rate of becoming lung cancer was observed as substantially high. Moreover, the use of lutein and zeaxanthin instead of beta carotene in the formula did not increase the risk of lung cancer. In addition, it was shown that omega-3 fatty acids did not decrease risk progression. In current data, the effect of the intake of carotenoid and antioxidant increased with diet on AMD is not coher