Which medication should you take for age-related macular degeneration?

AREDS Vitamin: The most common form of macular degeneration - the usually milder "dry" form has no effective medication currently. However, a specific formulation of vitamin a, c, e and zinc known as the areds formula has been shown to slow down its progress in certain high risk individuals. Other nutrients such as lutein are thought to help, but have yet to be proven in a large study.

Sepends on the type: There are 2 forms of macular degeneration - wet and dry. Dry is more common, slower to develop and the only current medical treatment is high-dose vitamins a, c, e and zinc. The wet form is quicker to grow, causes more vision problems sooner, but there are medical treatments that can help. Avastin and Lucentis (ranibizumab) are injectible drugs that can decrease the bleeding caused by wet armd.

Several: Age-related macular degeneration is a chronic disease of the central part of the retina. It is broken down into two types, the "dry" form, which involves slow, patchy deterioration of retinal cells, and the "wet" form which is caused by bleeding and leads to rapid vision loss. Current treatment for "wet" is intravitreal injections with eylea, lucentis, (ranibizumab) or avastin. For the "dry", areds vitamins.

Vitamins plus: Patients with moderate age-related macular degeneration of the dry type can use antioxidant vitamins known as the AREDS formula to reduce the risk of severe visual loss and progression. In addition, certain medications injected by the physician in the office can ameliorate the wet form of the disease