New Eye Drops vs Age-Related Macular Degeneration

We’ve written previously on preventative interventions against age-related macular degeneration (AMD):

How To Avoid Age-Related Macular Degeneration

…and then supplemented that, to to speak, with:

Fatty Acids For The Eyes & Brain: The Good And The Bad

However, what if ADM happens anyway?

Not a dry eye in the house

Age-related macular degeneration comes in two forms, wet and dry, of which, dry is by far the most common (being 9 out of 10 of all cases of AMD).

It sounds like the sort of thing that eye drops should be in order for, but in fact, the wetness vs dryness is about what’s going on inside the macula, not what’s happening on the surface of the eye. Up until now, the only treatments available (aside from supplement regimes, which we linked just above) have been injectable drugs, which:

• are not fun (yes, the injection goes into the eyeball)
• don’t actually work very well (modest improvements in vision; significantly better than nothing though)

…and even those won’t help in the late stages.

However, a Korean research team has developed eye drops with peptides that inhibit the interactions between Toll-like receptors (TLRs) and TLR-signalling proteins, in a way that addresses part of the pathogenesis of AMD:

Massively Parallel Screening of Toll/Interleukin-1 Receptor (TIR)-Derived Peptides Reveals Multiple Toll-Like Receptors (TLRs)-Targeting Immunomodulatory Peptides

That’s quite a dense read though, so here’s a pop-science article that explains it more simply, but in more detail than we can here:

New eye drop treatment offers hope for dry AMD patients

This is a big improvement from the state of affairs previously, in which eye drops really couldn’t help at all:

What eye drops can treat macular degeneration? ← pop-science article from January 2023

No AMD, and/but want your eye health to be better?

Check out these:

10 Great Exercises to Improve Your Eyesight ← you can quickly see the results for yourself

Take care!