The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7206 p48
13 July 2002

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BMJ (bmj.com)

Age-related macular degeneration not helped by daily vitamin E

Daily supplementation with vitamin E does not prevent the development or slow the progression of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a four-year randomised controlled trial has shown.

The trial also showed that vitamin E has no effect on the prevalence or incidence of early and late stages of the disease, as assessed by retinal photography.

Researchers randomised 1,193 healthy volunteers aged between 55 and 80 years to receive either vitamin E (500iu) or placebo daily. After four years there was no significant difference between the number of people who developed early AMD in the active and placebo arms of the study. AMD incidence was 8.6 per cent among those randomised to vitamin E supplementation compared with 8.1 per cent among those randomised to placebo.

When progression of AMD was examined, 95 people out of 491 randomised to vitamin E showed progression compared with 90 of 506 people randomised to placebo (19 vs 18 per cent).

A secondary analysis of the effect of vitamin E on visual acuity and visual function was also unable to show any effect from the intervention. The researchers comment that the apparent lack of effect from vitamin E was disappointing, but accept that the lack of an effect is consistent with contradictory findings from previous cross-sectional studies (BMJ 2002;325:11).