B vitamins, folic acid may protect vision
Supplements may guard against macular degeneration
By Nathan Seppa
A combination of vitamin B-6, vitamin B-12 and folic acid might protect women against age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in the elderly, a new study finds.
Women taking this trio of vitamins in amounts well beyond the recommended daily doses were one-third less likely to develop macular degeneration than were people taking placebos, researchers report in the Feb. 23 Archives of Internal Medicine.
Cigarette smoking is known to increase a person’s likelihood of developing macular degeneration. Other than not smoking, there is little a person can do to limit risk, says study coauthor William Christen, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “This is the first trial to suggest a benefit” from vitamin B and folic acid, he says. “I’d like to see it corroborated in other populations.”
Christen and his colleagues analyzed data collected as part of a large trial originally designed to test the effects of other vitamins on women with heart problems. In 1998, researchers selected 5,205 women in the trial who didn’t have macular degeneration and were willing to take part in a test of B-6, B-12 and folic acid — also called folate and vitamin B-9. Half of the women were randomly assigned to get these supplements; the others received placebo pills.