Fish Oil Benefits Your Eyes

A Couple of Servings Per Week of Fish Protects From 2 Eye Problems

By Daniel J. DeNoon
WebMD Health News

May 8, 2003 -- You probably know fish oil benefits your health. Now there's more: People who eat the most fish have the fewest eye problems.

That's the finding of two studies reported at this week's meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO). They show that the benefits of fish oil -- when consumed as servings of fish -- extend to two very serious eye problems.

The first of these problems is age-related macular degeneration. That's disruption of the center of the retina, the fine nerve net at the back of the eye essential for all fine visual tasks. It's the leading cause of age-related blindness.

Why might fish oil protect eyes from age-related macular degeneration? One component of fish oil is docosahexaenoic acid -- DHA for short. It's one of the omega-3 fatty acids linked to other health benefits. Interestingly, DHA builds up in the eye near light-sensing nerve cells.

National Eye Institute researcher John Paul SanGiovanni, ScD, and colleagues analyzed dietary data from 4,513 60- to 80-year-old participants in the Age-Related Eye Disease Study. Those who ate fish more than twice a week were half as likely to get macular degeneration as those who ate no fish at all. More than one weekly portion of broiled/baked fish or tuna lowered the risk by a third.

"The risk for [age-related macular degeneration] was significantly decreased for the highest versus the lowest quintiles of total [omega-3 fatty acids] intake," SanGiovanni and colleagues write in their abstract.

In the second study, Komal A. Trivedi, MD, of Harvard's Schepens Eye Research Institute, and colleagues asked whether fish oil protects from dry eye syndrome. Dry eye syndrome is when a person's eyes don't make enough tears. This can lead to scarring of the cornea and vision loss.

Trivedi's team analyzed data from 32,470 female health professionals in the huge Women's Health Study.

They found that women whose diets had the most omega-3 fatty acids -- as measured by how much fish they ate -- were least likely to have dry eye syndrome. Those whose diets had the most fish oil were less likely to have dry eye syndrome than those whose diets had the least fish oil.

Eating tuna was particularly helpful. Those that ate two to four servings of tuna a week had an 18% lower risk of dry eye syndrome than those who ate less tuna. Eating five or six four-ounce servings of tuna every week lowered this risk by a whopping 66%.

"Women with a higher dietary intake of omega-3 fatty acids are at decreased risk of developing dry eye syndrome," Trivedi and colleagues write in their abstract.

Meanwhile, a third ARVO report by Brigham and Women's Hospital researcher William G. Christen, PhD, and colleagues found that beta-carotene doesn't cut macular degeneration risk.

Christen's team looked at data from 22,071 male doctors in the Physicians Health Study.

"Twelve years of beta-carotene supplementation has no appreciable effect on age-related macular degeneration," they write in their abstract.

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