至尊英语阅读资料之健康与卫生专题第701集.pdfVIP

health articles 701 [17501]Millions Will Go Blind Due to Age-related Eye Disease By 2020, as many as 7.5 million people over 65 years of age may suffer from vision loss due to age-related macular degeneration (AMD). This grim scenario comes from Drs. Gisele Soubrane of the Clinique Ophthalmologique Universitaire de Creteil in France, and Neil M. Bressler of the Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the United States in their report published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology. “AMD occurs most frequently in people above 50 years of age, with a strong increase in prevalence in people over 65 years of age. This rapid increase in AMD prevalence with age will probably pose a growing health problem for developed countries because of the increasing proportion of the population in older age groups. Data from the United Kingdom have shown that the number of new registrations of blindness due to AMD has increased by 30 – 40 percent in the past 50 years,” they warned. At present, AMD affects 30 million people worldwide and is the leading cause of blindness in people over 50, according to the AMD Alliance International, a non-profit alliance of international vision and seniors organizations. Its cause is unknown but it appears to be linked to smoking, light skin or eye color, hypertension, coronary artery disease, sun exposure, and a diet low in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. In AMD, the macula – a light-sensitive tissue at the center of the retina that provides clear central vision – is affected. As the disease worsens, central vision is lost causing blindness. Most people (90 percent) with AMD have the dry form of the disease that causes slow vision loss. The rest (10 percent) have the less common wet form that is characterized by the growth of abnormal blood vessels in the back of the eye that block vision. This causes severe vision loss in only 2 to 3 years. Fortunately, there is hope for peo