According to The Independent, boosting vitamin D intake could help to prevent age-related diseases, in particular loss of vision and blindness. This widely reported news story centres on research in which “middle-aged” mice were treated for six weeks with vitamin D. The researchers examined the mice’s vision and looked for signs of inflammation in their eyes and whether proteins associated with normal ageing had built up. The accumulation of these proteins and inflammation can increase the risk of people developing age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a major cause of blindness in people aged over 50 in countries such as the UK. The researchers found that there was less inflammation and build-up of the protein amyloid beta in the retinas of mice treated with vitamin D.
However, the researchers did not specifically look at a mouse model of AMD and this study has limited relevance to humans. Therefore, it’s not possible to say, based on the study’s results, whether vitamin D has any effect on age-related vision loss or AMD in humans.
