Taking B vitamins can prevent a common type of vision loss in older women, according to the first rigorous study of its kind.
It's a slight redemption for vitamin supplements, which have suffered recent blows from research finding them powerless at preventing disease.
Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in people 65 and older. It causes a layer of the eye to deteriorate, blurring the center of the field of vision and making it difficult to recognize faces, read and drive. There's no cure, but treatment, including laser therapy, can slow it.
Prevention has been more elusive.
"Other than avoiding cigarette smoking, this is the first suggestion from a randomized trial of a possible way to reduce early stage AMD," said Dr. William Christen of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who led the research and said the findings should apply to men as well.
The women in the study who took a combination of B vitamins -- B-6, folic acid and B-12 -- reduced their risk of macular degeneration by more than one-third after seven years, compared to women taking dummy pills.
The study, involving more than 5,000 women ages 40 and older at risk for cardiovascular disease, appears in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine.
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