Prevelance, progression of AMD

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So the prevalence of age-related macular degeneration in the US is estimated at about 20 million patients. Now, not all those patients have the late forms, which have the vision threatening complications, wet and geographic attributes, estimated about one and a half million Americans have the late form of the disease. What's important though, is that this is a disease of aging and as patients live longer we're expecting to see a dramatic increase in the number of patients with macular degenerations, estimated that there are about 200,000 new cases per year in the US, and worldwide it's estimated to be up around 200 million patients with macular degeneration. So you can see this is a huge problem and is only increasing in the future. So there are several known risk factors for macular degeneration, some that you cannot change and some that you can, so the ones you cannot change is that we know that this is a genetic disease. So if you have a family member with age-related macular degeneration, your risk is considerably higher. But we also know that women are at a higher risk than men, we know that certain races, for instance, Caucasians are more likely to have it, and African-Americans, Hispanics are less likely to have it. And these are obviously things that you cannot change, however, there are risk factors that you can change. So we know that smoking is a very known risk factor and a very high risk factor. So if you have a family history or you fit one of the genetic profiles, smoking would be a very bad idea. Things that affect your heart also affect patients with age-related macular degeneration, so higher body mass index, higher lipid levels, these all can increase your risk of macular degeneration. So thankfully, the progression of age-related macular degeneration is actually pretty slow. So if you have early dry macular degeneration, you may never have any loss of vision and really need to just eat healthy, take vitamins, don't smoke, and you won't have any issues whatsoever, and that's the majority of patients. It's important to understand that only about 15% of patients with macular degeneration will progress to one of the late forms and lose vision. That progression can take many years. What's also important to understand is that wet macular degeneration as well as the late form of dry is proceeded by dry macular degeneration, so you don't suddenly develop wet age-related macular degeneration, and that's why it's so important to have an annual eye exam to follow for progression and for changes, and to understand your risk profile.