STATINS and diabetes drugs keep your eyes sharp in old age, study finds.
The pills, taken by millions of Britons, reduce the risk of age-related macular degeneration, known as AMD.
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About 600,000 people in the UK have AMD and it makes vision blurry or patchy, causing worse with age.
Experts from the University of Bonn in Germany found that people taking common medications are up to a fifth less likely to develop AMD in their 50s, 60s and 70s.
Study author Dr. Matthias Mauschitz said: “This is the first large-scale study to show an association between the use of lipid-lowering drugs and antidiabetic drugs with lower AMD in the general population.
“These findings may provide future therapeutic targets.”
The survey included 14 smaller surveys of 38,694 over-50s in Europe.
It found people on cholesterol lowering drugs, including statins, were 15 percent less likely to develop AMD.
And those being treated for type 2 diabetes mellituswhich drugs like metformin had a 22 percent lower risk.
Cholesterol and diabetes drugs are the NHS’s most prescribed products, costing around £1.5 billion of a total of £9.7 billion spent on prescriptions last year.
dr. Mauschitz said they can reduce swelling in blood vessels connected to the eyes, reducing the risk of damage to the retina.
Some types of AMD have no cure or treatment, and the cause of the condition is unclear.
In the British Journal of Ophthalmology, Dr. Mauschitz said the findings could help doctors understand how the disease begins.
