A study published in EBioMedicine showed high-dose statin can be an efficient form of treatment for patients with macular degeneration.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Harvard Medical School and the University of Crete in Greece prescribed 80mg of atorvastatin to 23 patients with dry age-related macular degeneration.
Here are four points:
1. Of those patients, 10 experienced an elimination of the deposits under the retina and mild improvement in visual acuity.
2. AMD is the leading cause of blindness in the developing world, affecting more than 150 million patients worldwide.
3. There are two forms of AMD: wet and dry. The wet form accounts for approximately 15 percent of AMD cases and is treated using therapies developed at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Harvard Medical School. The dry form is more common, accounting for approximately 85 percent of cases, but effective therapies are currently lacking.
4. The investigators' next step in this line of research is to expand to a larger prospective multicenter trial to further investigate the efficacy of the treatment in a larger sample of patients with dry AMD.