Macular Degeneration: How Yale Experts Treat This Common Cause of Vision Loss
One in three people aged 55 and older have macular degeneration, a leading cause of vision loss in older adults.
Macular degeneration, also known as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), affects the macula, which is an area in the center of the retina, the tissue at the back of the eye responsible for vision.
The macula, explains Yale Medicine ophthalmologist Brian Hafler, MD, PhD, controls our central vision, or what you see when you look straight ahead. Central vision helps us make out fine images and objects. In AMD, aging progressively damages the macula, which makes it hard to see faces, read, drive, or do other everyday activities.
“In macular degeneration, there's a range of visual impairments. On one end of the spectrum—the mild end—people could have no symptoms and not know there's anything wrong,” says Lucian V. Del Priore, MD, PhD, chair of Yale Medicine Ophthalmology. “They may be told they have macular degeneration on an eye exam.”
People can be predisposed to AMD based on their genetic profile and risk factors, including exposure to bright light, diet, and smoking. There are two forms of AMD: “dry” and “wet.”
Dry AMD is more common and features gradual damage to cells in the eye; wet AMD is rare and more difficult to treat and involves the growth of leaky blood vessels that cause vision loss over time.
Dr. Hafler is exploring tools and approaches developed at Yale Medicine that can treat AMD. Specifically he is studying zebrafish, which can regrow their retinal neurons following injury and damage.
“We are figuring out the factors and pathways that zebrafish activate that we don’t and we hope to translate this into clinically trials and impact patient care we provide here at Yale Medicine,” Dr. Hafler says.
Meanwhile, Mark Fields, MPH, PhD, an associate professor of ophthalmology at Yale School of Medicine, is researching therapies to intervene early in AMD.
“We are looking at the inflammatory response that is happening in the retina, before cells are damaged and eventually die, and we are getting closer and closer to clinical trials for patients with macular degeneration,” Dr. Fields says.
Learn more about AMD and advances in treatment in the video above.
