Research shows that eating omega-3 fatty acids – most commonly found in oily fish such as tinned salmon and tuna – can help prevent the onset of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a condition that leads to the gradual loss of vision.
They found that having just one to two portions of fish a week could reduce the risk of sight loss by up to 42 per cent in older women, according to a new study.
This finding backs up previous research which showed similar results in men.
The lead author Dr William Christen, of Harvard Medical School, said that “dark meat” fish appeared to help the most.
He said: “This lower risk appeared to be due primarily to consumption of canned tuna fish and dark-meat fish.”
More than 500,000 people in Britain suffer from AMD which is caused by the deterioration and death of the cells in the macula, a part of the retina used to see straight ahead.
The disease, which mainly effects people over 40, robs sufferers of their sight by creating a black spot in the centre of their vision which slowly gets bigger.
With numbers of AMD sufferers expected to treble in the next 25 years as the population ages, there is an urgent need for a breakthrough.
The team at Harvard Medical School piggybacked on a another study of more than 38,000 women to obtain the findings.
All the participants began the study AMD-free.
Questionnaires were given out to assess participants eating habits, including how much omega-3 fatty acids each woman ate.
Over a 10-year follow-up period, the women’s eye-health was tracked, with a specific focus on AMD.
A total of 235 of the women who participated developed macular degeneration.
Women who ate one or more servings of fish a week were two-fifths – 42 per cent – less likely to develop the condition than those who ate less than one serving of fish per month.
The results showed that women who consumed the most Omega-3 fatty acids found in fish had almost two-fifths lower risk – 38 per cent – of AMD than those who ate the least.
Omega 3, whose common form in food is Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) can also be taken as a supplement.
“In summary, these prospective data from a large population of women with no prior diagnosis of AMD indicate that regular consumption of DHA and EPA and fish significantly reduced the risk of incident AMD,” concluded the study which was published in the journal Archives of Ophthalmology.
For omega-6 fatty acids, higher intake of linoleic acid but not arachidonic acid was associated with an increased risk of age-related macular degeneration, however this association was non-significant after adjustment for other risk factors and fats.
By Richard Alleyne
Telegraph UK