This refers to the dry form of age-related macular degeneration. Most/all articles I have seen on dealing with age-related MD refer to the wet form.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110518105726.htm
ScienceDaily (May 18, 2011) — Slowing down the aggregation or "clumping" of vitamin A in the eye may help prevent vision loss caused by macular degeneration, research from Columbia University Medical Center has found.
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In animal model studies, Dr. Washington's lab has set about synthesizing a modified vitamin A drug incorporating the hydrogen isotope deuterium rather than protonium (the more abundant isotope of hydrogen) at select positions. Dr. Washington and his lab hypothesized that these modifications would make the bond involved in dimerization harder to break, which would slow dimerization. By feeding this new vitamin A drug to healthy mice, they were able to reduce the amount of vitamin A dimers without any observed side effects, said Dr. Washington, the Michael Jaharis Assistant Professor of Ophthalmic Sciences at Columbia.
When given to mice with the same genetic defect as humans with Stargardt's disease, which usually experience early vision loss, the modified vitamin A resulted in fewer vitamin A dimers, better overall ocular health and improved vision. Importantly, they also observed that the modified vitamin A behaved exactly as normal vitamin A does in all other aspects, making it an attractive potential therapy for preventing blindness in humans
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Dry-AMD affects some 10 million Americans and is the leading cause of blindness in the Western world. Among them, approximately 3 million Americans are at high risk of irreversible vision loss, and 1 million of them are seriously visually impaired due to a late form of dry-AMD. There is currently no treatment for dry-AMD
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