MONDAY, Nov. 16 (HealthDay News) -- In patients with non-neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD), cataract surgery is not associated with an increased risk of AMD progression. In addition, dietary fats may have differential effects on the risk of AMD, according to two studies in the November issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology.

Li Ming Dong, Ph.D., of the Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York, and colleagues studied 108 patients with non-neovascular AMD who underwent cataract surgery. After 12 months, they found that neovascular AMD developed in only three of 65 eyes (4.6 percent) that did not have neovascular AMD at the preoperative visit or the one-week postoperative visit, in line with an estimated one-year progression rate in the general AMD population.

Niyati Parekh, Ph.D., of New York University in New York City, and colleagues studied 1,787 women ages 50 to 79 years enrolled in the Carotenoids in Age-Related Eye Disease Study, whose fat intake was assessed between 1994 and 1998 and whose eyes were assessed for AMD between 2001 and 2004. Compared to women in lowest quintile of ω-6 and ω-3 polyunsaturated fat intake, they found that women in the highest quintile had a two-fold higher prevalence of intermediate AMD. They also found that AMD prevalence was reduced in women with a higher intake of monounsaturated fatty acids.

"These results support a growing body of evidence suggesting that diets high in several types of fat may contribute to the risk of intermediate AMD and that diets high in monounsaturated fatty acids may be protective," Parekh and colleagues write.

Abstract - Dong
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Abstract - Parekh
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