Fruits & Vision

Eating fruits may protect you against the development of age-related maculopathy (ARM).

Eating fruits may protect you against the development of age-related maculopathy (ARM), an eye disease that can cause blindness.

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According to an article in the June issue of The Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals, antioxidant vitamin and mineral supplementation has been found to help protect against ARM.

A recent study by Eunyoung Cho and his colleagues at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston examined the effect of antioxidant vitamins and carotenoids (compounds responsible for the red, yellow and orange pigments found in some fruits and vegetables), as well as fruits and vegetables on the development of ARM among 77,562 women and 40,866 men. Participants also reported their vitamin and supplement use once every two years.

The researchers found that fruit consumption was inversely associated with risk of neovascular ARM, and participants who ate three or more servings per day of fruit had a 36 percent lower risk of ARM compared to participants who reported eating less than 1.5 servings per day. These findings were similar for men and women.

The researchers also found that none of the vegetable items appeared to be strongly related to either early or neovascular ARM risks, except that carrot intake had a weak, nonsignificant inverse association with the neovascular form."

"None of the antioxidant vitamins and carotenoids was strongly related to either early or neovascular ARM risk, although many of them, including total carotenoids, had a suggestive inverse association with neovascular ARM risk," the researchers write.

"In this prospective study of women and men, intakes of antioxidant vitamins or carotenoids either from food only or from food and supplements were not strongly related to ARM risk. Similarly, no substantial associations were observed between vegetable intake and ARM. However, fruit intake was inversely related to ARM, particularly neovascular ARM, the form of this disease that frequently involves severe vision loss," they conclude.