Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a disease that is easily overlooked but has a serious impact on people’s quality of life, with its prevalence and severity increasing with age. According to statistics, the cumulative incidence of early AMD in at least one eye is 24% and the incidence of late AMD is 8% for people aged 75 years. AMD causes loss of central vision, and patients with late AMD have visual acuity of 0.1 or less. The incidence of AMD tends to increase significantly with the onset of the baby boom and the increase in human life expectancy. By 2050, the number of patients with early AMD will be twice as high as it is today, and severe blinding AMD will be 2.6 times higher than it is today (2009 Archives of Ophthalmology). There are two types of AMD, “wet” with subretinal neovascularization and “dry” with map-like atrophy. The “wet” form has a poorer prognosis, and its management is a major focus of ophthalmic research. For a long time, there has been a lack of effective treatment for AMD. A few years ago, laser retinal photocoagulation therapy (PDT) was developed to prevent vision loss due to “wet” AMD. Photocoagulation can reduce subretinal hemorrhage and prevent retinal pigment epithelial and neuroretinal detachment, retinal thickening, and secondary scarring of the central retina. However, the recurrence rate of subretinal neovascularization after treatment with retinal photocoagulation is high, and the treatment outcome is not satisfactory. In addition, clinical trials have been completed with antioxidant and zinc supplementation therapy to prevent or delay AMD. This therapy prevented the progression of AMD from moderate to severe in 25% of patients. However, it was not effective in the progression of early AMD lesions. In recent years, intravitreal injections of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) have been shown to be effective in some patients with wet AMD. As a representative of such drugs, Lucentis has been approved for clinical use. Lucentis has been shown to improve vision in some patients by up to 33.8% compared to placebo. However, anti-VEGF therapies still have shortcomings: only 1/3 of patients can improve their vision after Lucentis treatment, and about 1/6 of patients will continue to lose vision and become blind. These facts suggest that an anti-VEGF strategy cannot meet the requirements for treating all patients with wet AMD. In addition, Lucentis treatment is expensive and requires long-term, multiple injections. The above deficiencies are in urgent need of improvement, and addressing these issues will be a hot topic in research concerning AMD. It is foreseeable that these problems will be solved in the next decade, and new effective treatments for AMD that treat both the symptoms and the root cause will emerge. Until recently, the incidence of AMD and the factors associated with it other than age were unknown. After 20 years of epidemiological studies, it has been shown that smoking, blood pressure, diet, physical condition, and inflammatory markers influence the onset and progression of AMD. In the last two years, genetic factors (e.g., complement factor H) have been found to be associated with AMD. These advances may also lead to the creation of new tools for the prevention and treatment of AMD.