Treating AMD and preventing dry AMD converting to wet AMD

In this series of blogs posts, which are based on short interviews (Ed: embed the youtube clip under this paragraph), Medical Retinal Expert Jaheed Khan describes the different types of AMD; including:

• the dry and the wet,
• how they present,
• what they look like,
• how they differ, and
• how we can treat them.

Treatment options for Age-Related Macular Degeneration. I) Dry AMD and Prevention of Wet AMD
Jane Olver: Jaheed, Good Morning. Tell me about the treatment of age-related macular degeneration, please? Which patients are suitable for treatment?Jaheed Khan: So if you take the two groups, of dry macular degeneration and wet. If you think about treating dry AMD, the bottom line, unfortunately, we have no effective medical treatment for dry macular degeneration. We still have not worked out a way for replacing those worn retinal cells that have aged. What we tend to focus on with the treatment and management is the prevention of the dry macular degeneration going to wet AMD.
Now if you think about wet and you have developed wet…
JO: I did not know about prevention of wet AMD. Tell me about prevention first. That sounds very interesting.
JK: What we do know, from studies that looked at taking vitamin supplements in certain groups of patients with dry macular degeneration, is that they can take a formulation of vitamins which can prevent or reduce the chance of those patients developing wet AMD. So, it is only good at making sure you do not convert from the dry form to the wet form. It is not any good at reducing the chance of progression of just patients with only the dry AMD.
Looking after yourself, having a healthy lifestyle, stopping smoking – if you do, these are all good things to do to try and halt the progression of dry macular degeneration, because we do know those things are linked. But regarding reversing dry, we have not got an effective treatment for that yet.
JO: Thank you. In the next interview with  Medical Retinal Expert Jaheed Khan, we will talk more about the treatment of wet AMD.