The doctors from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam have found that people, who regularly take aspirin, face the risk of losing eyesight with age.
The scientists led by Dr. Paul de Jong collected the data about the state of health and the lifestyle of 4,700 people over 65 years old from Norway, Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, and Estonia. 839 participants of the study took aspirin every day. 39 of them were diagnosed to have a grave eye disease – wet macular degeneration.
The disease usually affects both eyes and is a cause of irreversible loss of eyesight. Moreover, it is women that are most often affected by macular degeneration. Dry macular degeneration is more common. It is not as dangerous as the wet one, but it also can lead to the loss of eyesight.
Aspirin is one of the most common means of prevention of cardiovascular diseases. But at the same time it hurts eyes. According to Paul de Jong, the benefits of aspirin still outweigh the harm produced by it. At least, the dosage should be strictly observed while taking the drug.
The facts do not prove that aspirin itself leads to the loss of eyesight. However, it may aggravate the already existing disease, as suggested by the results of the study published in Opthalmology journal. It is noted that aspirin promotes the progression of only wet macular degeneration and does not affect the dry form of the disease.
Source of the image: Photl.
