Note – I am thankful to  eyedoc for his key opinion and note .

AMD is the leading cause of blindness in the United States, affecting 10 million Americans over age 60. It’s a condition where the central part of the retina wears out, causing vision loss. Everyone is at risk for macular degeneration as they age, but people who have a family history or who smoke are more likely to develop it.

Although there is no cure for AMD, there is a procedure which helps end-stage disease sufferers by implanting a microscopic telescope into the eye.

“This is a telescopic implant – a very tiny telescope that is implanted in the eye when the lens is removed. This takes the place of the individual’s own lens and remains in the eye permanently,” Dr. Sid Mandelbaum, an ophthalmologist at East Side Eye Surgeons in New York City, told Fox News.

The procedure takes a little more than an hour, and once the patient has the implant, the telescope magnifies the images a patient sees and projects them. After surgery, patients undergo occupational therapy to help them get used to their new vision.

“The eye is kind of like the video camera that sends the image to the brain,” said Mandelbaum. “The brain is the central processor that integrates everything, and so we are retraining our brain to learn to use this vision that’s a little bit different than the vision that we have used all of our lives up until this point.”

The procedure does not restore patients’ sight to the level it was before they developed AMD. The eye telescope is designed to improve functional capabilities like recognizing facial detail, reading signs and allowing patients to see where they are going. However, experts warn it’s not the kind of vision that would allow a patient suffering with AMD to drive again.

To qualify for the procedure, patients need to be at least 75 years old, have end-stage macular degeneration in both eyes, and have at least one eye that has not undergone cataract surgery.

For Patricia Gajewski, who received the telescope implant in early 2013, the results have been life changing.

“It’s not 100 percent, but it is better – I can tell,” Gajewski told Fox News. “I can walk into a room and recognize some faces; I am not afraid to be social. I was afraid to go out by myself. I was afraid to cross the street and everything like that, but now I can cross the street. I can go shopping by myself.”

“[My mother] can maintain herself in her house, by doing her everyday things that we take for granted, like cooking, like sewing, like cutting the grass,” said Gajewski’s daughter, Linda Tesesco. “You know, the doorbell rings and she now can see and identify who’s at the door.”

The telescope implant is FDA approved and is available nationwide. Source

Telescope eye implant cost and More info

http://macuclear.com/
http://novabay.com/technology/pipeline
http://www.avalanchebiotech.com/pipeline.php
http://www.stemcellsinc.com/Therapeutic-Programs/Overview.htm

http://www.molecularpartners.com/our-products/

http://seekingalpha.com/article/2543805-biotime-is-right-on-time-files-ind-for-amd

By EyeDoc –  am really sorry that your grandpa is suffering from this devastating illness that effects those of us reaching an age when we thought that we would have lots of time to gaze on our loved ones and catch up on all of the reading that we never had time for.

Dry macular degeneration, http://eyewiki.aao.org/Age-related_macular_degenerationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macular_degeneration is a disease of the retinal pigment epithelium that is frequently inherited. There are many factors that influence the expression of AMD, including epigenetics, microRNA, and mitochondrial genetics . Here is a good review:http://www.humgenomics.com/content/6/1/13 Dry macular degeneration sometimes morphs into wet macular degeneration and wet macular degeneration that fails anti-VEGF therapy frequently morphs into dry macular degeneration.

The AREDS2 micronutrients mentioned by Dr.KSS decreases the progression of intermediate dry AMD of both the geographic and drusen type, into the wet type by 25% over 5 years and shows that epigenetics does play a role, possibly by limiting oxidative damage to the most metabolically active tissue in the body. http://www.nei.nih.gov/areds2/PatientFAQ.asp PLEASE NOTE: this type of intervention is not innocuous and is only good in limiting the progression of the intermediate stage of AMD. It DOES NOT prevent AMD nor does it limit mild AMD from progressing to intermediate.

To date, the treatment of dry AMD involves prevention. The single most efficacious activity that you can engage in to avoid AMD is the avoidance of smoking. PERIOD.

The only drug that I am aware of for dry macular degeneration is Zimura, a complement factor C5 inhibitor from $OPHT. They plan on starting phase 2/3 trials to see if it is beneficial in dry, geographic AMD. I am not sure that I believe that this will work and have seen no date to convince me of this. I have heard talk about macuclear’s eyedrop treatment, but cannot find any data or articles on it. The website is not very informative and the clinicaltrials.gov is of very limited help. It is supposed to increase choroidal circulation. I am sticking clear of this until the companies become more forthcoming with data.
I am still fascinated by $AAVL and $OPHT. The former has a greater chance of being transformative, but has a higher risk due to the association of falling systemic sFlt and hypertension. Both companies have great great science going for them and are going after a ginormous and growing market (wet AMD). Both have the partnership of large companies.

As my patient population ages, I cannot emphasize enough the number of that develop both wet and dry AMD. This number is increasing alarmingly.

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eyedoc says:

March 25, 2015 at 4:33 am

Hi Kipley, Ben, John, Om and others. Fear over AMD is widespread and for good reason. I would first of all urge everyone to get a baseline eye exam with photos of your macula and surrounding areas. No matter the findings, you can follow your macula using an Amler Grid daily. If you have a family history of it, you are more likely to get it at sometime in your life, the older you get the higher the risk. If you have smoked during your lifetime, the risk is elevated. If your amsler grid changes from straight to wavy, you should go and see your ophthalmologist ASAP. Don’t delay!

If your ophthalmologist says your macula is normal, I would take Lutein 20mg daily and throw in some Zeaxanthin 2-10 mg to boot. It won’t hurt you and their is some evidence it can improve your vision function if your diet is deficient in carotenoids. Try to eat lots of leafy green veggies with some kind of fatty dressing or olive oil to help absorption.

If you a getting changes in your macula so that your ophthalmologist says that you actually have the disease, you can take the AREDS 2 formula with lutein 20 mg and zeaxanthin 2 to 10 mg daily. All the brands are the same. Evidence for help with this type of supplementation is only seen in intermediate and advanced macular degeneration (medium sized drusen and pigment epithelial changes of a certain size). In these cases, it has been shown to decrease progression to wet macular degeneration by 25% over 5 years. In the mild cases you take AREDS 2 to maintain sanity, but I cannot tell you how much sanity it buys since the AREDS 1 and 2 studies do not show any positive effects in this case. I don’t think that the AREDS 2 formula will do anything bad except cause stomach upset in some. In that case you would stop it, of course.

At this time, I don’t see any benefit to getting genetic testing. It won’t change anything, but might make you even more scared. Within the next year or two, there may be some evidence that genetic testing will help you decide what the optimal micronutrient supplementation is for an individual. We are not there, yet.

 

By Dr. KSS – some have advocated a vitamin cocktail of

500 milligrams (mg) of vitamin C
400 international units (IU) of vitamin E
15 mg of beta carotene (often as vitamin A — up to 25,000 IU)
80 mg of zinc (as zinc oxide)
2 mg of copper (as cupric oxide)
lutein

Smokers or former smokers should take vitamin A, and in my view 400 IU of vitamin E is too much, because of how it imposes higher all-cause mortality.

I am aware of telescopic lens implants, but don’t know off hand of pharma approaches to it. Eyedoc probably knows far better. The mechanism is quite a lot different from wet AMD.