VIDEO: Modifiable risk factors of dry AMD

Editor’s note: This is a previously posted video, and the below is an automatically generated transcript to be used for informational purposes. Please notify hliptak@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

In terms of patient treatments for dry macular degeneration, to keep their symptoms from worsening, you know, there really isn't a cure to dry macular degeneration so that needs to be stated outright. Historically, when we've looked at what we can do for our patients with dry macular degeneration, the main thing that we talk about are what are modifiable risk factors that we know can impact the disease? And sort of the main one that stands out are patients who are using cigarettes, right? Tobacco products. We do know that there's evidence that modifying that risk so either reducing, you know, the number of cigarettes or even stopping that completely, does improve patients' outcomes in AMD. So basically, we know those cigarettes do accelerate the growth of AMD. And so by stopping that you can, you can slow that down. Hypertension, hyperlipidemia are also loosely associated with that. So having, you know, control of those factors is important. And then also cardiovascular disease. So anything you could do to kind of modify those risks are things that patients can do. In terms of slowing progression, the main thing that we talk about with our patients in clinic, up to this time recently really, has been the AREDS treatment. And so AREDS is an age-related eye disease study that really got a start back in 1992. And there's been two versions of the study, AREDS one, which concluded in 2005. And then there was a second study, AREDS two, that went from about 2006, 2018. And these studies looked at vitamins. And these are, you know, basically high dose antioxidant vitamins that were formulated for patients to see if we could have an impact on modifying the progression of disease. And basically, what these vitamins were able to do, over these five-year studies, it reduced the risk of progression from, you know, intermediate age-related macular degeneration to severe age-related macular degeneration by about 26%. So most of us counsel our patients on taking these AREDS vitamins and you know, obviously the most recent study being AREDS two, that it really tends to be the mainstay of what we will counsel our patients on when it comes to disease modification because that really has been our only really solid evidence-based medicine that we're able to offer our patients when it comes to how we can slow the progression of disease. Now, obviously with the introduction of SYFOVRE or pegcetacoplan, that's gonna change the recommendations of what we can tell our patients with dry macular degeneration in terms of our treatment therapies and things that can be done. But again, outside of those therapies, which are again, sort of more recent developments, that's really what we've been telling our patients.