Dr. Grossman’s Blog

In the first study, Jennifer S.L. Tan, MBBS, BE at the University of Sydney, Australia and her colleagues evaluated data from 2,454 participants in the Blue Mountains Eye Study of men and women aged 49 and older. Those who consumed one serving of fish per week were shown to have a 31 percent lower adjusted risk of developing early AMD compared with those who consumed less.

In the second article, Elaine W. T. Chong, MD, PhD, of the Centre for Eye Research Australia and her associates evaluated data from 6,734 men and women aged 58 to 69 who participated in the Melbourne Collaborative Cohort Study. Dietary questionnaires completed between 1990 and 1994 were analyzed for the intake of various foods and individual fatty acids. Follow up examinations conducted between 2003 and 2006 detected 2,872 cases of early age-related macular degeneration and 88 cases of late disease.

A high intake of trans-unsaturated fats was associated with a significant increase in late macular degeneration, with those whose intake was categorized as among the top 25 percent of participants having a 76 percent greater risk than those whose intake was among the lowest fourth.

Olive oil emerged as protective against late disease. When those who reported consuming at least 100 milliliters per week olive oil were compared with those who consumed less than 1 milliliter per week, they were found to have a 52 percent lower risk of late AMD.

For early AMD, those whose omega-3 fatty acid intake was among the top 25 percent had a 15 percent lower risk compared with those whose intake was among the lowest quarter.

For more information on nutrition and macular degeneration and related research studies, see NaturalEyeCare’s Section on Macular Degeneration.

A new study shows that when people with retinal disease such as macular degeneration use a peripheral part of their retina to compensate for their loss of central vision, their brain appears to compensate by reorganizing its neural connections.

Macular degeneration (MD) causes a progressive loss of central visual.  To cope with this, MD patients often start to focus using a functional retinal area in the periphery of their area of vision. This use of a new area of focus may foster cortical reorganization.

Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity in participants as they performed a series of tests designed to visually stimulate their peripheral regions.  It was determined that when the participants visually stimulated the peripheral retinal locations they increased brain activity in the same areas of the visual cortex that are normally activated when healthy patients focused on objects in their central visual field.

Study authors believe that large-scale cortical reorganization of visual processing occurs in humans in response to retinal disease.  While several other studies have suggested that the brain can reorganize itself, this is the first study to show that this reorganization in patients with retinal disease is related to patient behavior.

Researchers are currently analyzing how long this reorganization takes and whether it can be assisted with low-vision training.

Learn more about macular degeneration

Read about eye exercises for vision fitness

SOURCE: Reorganization of visual processing is related to eccentric viewing in patients with macular degeneration, Schumacher, et al, Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, Volume 26, Number 4-5, 2008, 391 – 402.