Canadian researchers studying why obesity is a risk factor in the formation of wet AMD have discovered that gut bacteria which form as the result of a high fat diet may be to blame.

The research, which used mice, showed that replacing the unhealthy gut microbes with a colony taken from mice fed on a regular fat diet significantly improved the condition. Another finding was that microbes that flourish in the high-fat diet environment can cause long term inflammation across the whole body, which could contribute to AMD.

Researcher Professor Przemyslaw Sapieha says: “Influencing the types of microbes that reside in your gut either through diet or by some other means may thus affect the chances of developing AMD and the progression of this blinding disease.”

Sources:

1. Optometry Today:
   Healthy Gut, Happy Macula.

> 2. EMBO Molecular Medicine:
[Gut microbiota influences pathological angiogenesis in obesity-driven choroidal neovascularization]http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.15252/emmm.201606531/full).