Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2010 Jun;117(6):1163-8.
doi: 10.1016/j.ophtha.2009.10.043. Epub 2010 Feb 13.

Vitamin E and age-related macular degeneration in a randomized trial of women

William G Christen  1 , Robert J Glynn, Emily Y Chew, Julie E Buring
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Vitamin E and age-related macular degeneration in a randomized trial of women

William G Christen et al. Ophthalmology. 2010 Jun.

Abstract

Objective: To test whether alternate day vitamin E affects the incidence of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in a large-scale randomized trial of women.

Design: Randomized, double-masked, placebo-controlled trial.

Participants: Thirty-nine thousand eight hundred seventy-six apparently healthy female health professionals aged 45 years or older.

Intervention: Participants were assigned randomly to receive either 600 IU of natural-source vitamin E on alternate days or placebo.

Main outcome measures: Incident AMD responsible for a reduction in best-corrected visual acuity to 20/30 or worse based on self-report confirmed by medical record review.

Results: After 10 years of treatment and follow-up, there were 117 cases of AMD in the vitamin E group and 128 cases in the placebo group (relative risk, 0.93; 95% confidence interval, 0.72-1.19).

Conclusions: In a large-scale randomized trial of female health professionals, long-term alternate-day use of 600 IU of natural-source vitamin E had no large beneficial or harmful effect on risk of AMD.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow diagram illustrating the vitamin E component of the Women’s Health Study (WHS). A total of 455 participants who had a diagnosis of age-related macular degeneration at baseline were excluded.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Cumulative incidence rates of visually-significant age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in the Women’s Health Study.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Eye Diseases Prevalence Research Group. Prevalence of age-related macular degeneration in the United States. Arch Ophthalmol. 2004;122:564–572. - PubMed
    1. Klein R, Wang Q, Klein BE, et al. The relationship of age-related maculopathy, cataract, and glaucoma to visual acuity. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 1995;36:182–191. - PubMed
    1. Hogg RE, Chakravarthy U. Visual function and dysfunction in early and late age-related maculopathy. Prog Retin Eye Res. 2006;25:249–276. - PubMed
    1. Klein R, Klein BE, Tomany SC, et al. Ten-year incidence and progression of age-related maculopathy: The Beaver Dam Eye Study. Ophthalmology. 2002;109:1767–1779. - PubMed
    1. Age-Related Eye Disease Study Research Group. A simplified severity scale for age-related macular degeneration: AREDS report no. 18. Arch Ophthalmol. 2005;123:1570–1574. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types