This may not be so interesting to other people. But to me it’s fascinating. In essence, lighter pigmented people tend to get worse macular degeneration than darker pigmented people. Neovascular macular degeneration is the worst, although only 10-15% of all cases (but 90% of the vision loss attributable to the condition). They are the ones who have to have the injections into their eyes, sometimes monthly, to delay blindness from leakage of new blood vessels that grow in the retina. Someone noticed that people on levodopa for Parkinson’s disease didn’t get such bad macular degeneration. So some researchers put it to the test.
>>Levodopa was safe, well tolerated, and delayed anti-VEGF injection therapy while improving visual outcomes. In the first month, retinal fluid decreased by 29% (P = .02, n = 12) without anti-VEGF treatment. Through 6 months the decrease in retinal fluid was sustained, with a mean frequency of 0.38 injections/month. At month 6, mean visual acuity improved by 4.7 letters in Cohort-1 (P = .004, n = 15) and by 4.8 letters in Cohort-2 (P = .02, n = 11). Additionally, there was a 52% reduction in the need for anti-VEGF injections in Cohort-2 (P = .002).<<
Full paper here:
https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(20)30539-8/fulltext
I’m impressed by the thought processes that noticed the better outcomes in the Parkinson’s people and then said “That’s interesting”. The mechanism is a bit convoluted, but it’s described in the paper.