Doctors have discovered that a common diabetes medicine called metformin might help prevent one of the leading causes of blindness in older adults.
A new study from the University of Liverpool found that people over the age of 55 with diabetes who took metformin were 37% less likely to develop a more serious form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) within five years, compared to those who didn’t take the drug.
The findings were published in BMJ Open Ophthalmology.
AMD is the most common cause of vision loss in Western countries. It affects the macula, which is the central part of the retina at the back of the eye that is responsible for sharp vision. Over time, AMD can damage this area, leading to serious vision problems.
There are two types of late-stage AMD: one is called geographic atrophy (dry AMD), where the tissue in the eye slowly dies; the other is wet AMD, where abnormal blood vessels grow and cause damage.
Right now, there is no treatment for geographic atrophy in the UK and Europe. The treatment for wet AMD involves repeated eye injections, which are costly and uncomfortable.
In the study, researchers looked at the eye health of 2,000 people who took part in Liverpool’s diabetic eye screening program over five years. They used detailed eye photographs to check for signs of AMD and tracked how the condition changed over time. Then, they compared people who were taking metformin to those who were not.
The team also made sure to account for differences such as age, gender, and how long someone had diabetes, which could affect the results. After adjusting for these factors, they found that people on metformin had a significantly lower risk of developing intermediate AMD.
The odds were 0.63 in the metformin group compared to the group not using the drug. This means metformin users were much less likely to experience disease progression.
Doctors had suspected before that metformin might be helpful in preventing AMD, but most earlier research relied on less detailed data, such as health records or insurance claims. This new study is the first to use actual eye photographs to grade the condition, giving more accurate results.
Dr. Nick Beare, the lead researcher and an eye doctor, said the results were very encouraging.
“Most people who suffer from AMD have no treatment, so this is a great breakthrough in our search for new treatments. What we need to do now is test metformin as a treatment for AMD in a clinical trial. Metformin has the potential to save many people’s sight,” he said.
In summary, this study gives new hope that an affordable and widely used medicine like metformin could one day be used to prevent vision loss in older adults. More research and clinical trials will be needed, but this finding could lead to a major shift in how AMD is treated in the future.
If you care about diabetes, please read studies about Vitamin D and type 2 diabetes, and to people with diabetes, some fruits are better than others.
For more health information, please see recent studies that low calorie diets may help reverse diabetes, and 5 vitamins that may prevent complication in diabetes.
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