Recently, the Chinese Journal of Ophthalmology published an article titled “Public Awareness of Age-Related Macular Degeneration Urgently Needs to be Increased”, which talks about the economic losses caused by age-related macular degeneration: in the United States, the statistic from 10 years ago was that it would cause a loss of 0.27% of the country’s GDP. In France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, expenditures related to the disease are also in the range of 50 to 100 million euros. Although age-related macular degeneration (age-related macular degeneration, AMD) brings a great deal of economic losses, but the public knows little about it. A reporter interviewed nearly 50 people on the street at random, and not a single person had heard of this eye disease. “I have never heard of this disease before. Originally always thought it was cataracts, family members always said to wait for the growth of ‘ripe’ before going to do surgery, the results after the examination only to know is the fundus macular degeneration. Now, the doctor said that the macular area has formed a scar, there is no good treatment, if early treatment may also delay the condition.” A 74-year-old woman in Tangshan, Hebei province, said to the Science Times reporter with a helpless face. I. Irreversible blinding disease Age-related macular degeneration is mainly a lesion caused by harmful light and free radicals, which occurs in the macular area of the fundus of the eye. According to Chen Youxin, professor of ophthalmology at Peking Union Medical College Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, “Age-related macular degeneration has become one of the main causes of blindness among middle-aged and elderly people in China, which seriously affects the quality of life of middle-aged and elderly patients, restricts their ability to take care of themselves, and also leads to falls, hip fractures, and even depression in some patients. But unfortunately, few people know that it is an irreversible blinding disease.” Chen Youxin made this analogy: “The eye is like a camera, the retina is like a lens, cataract blindness is mainly caused by retinal damage, and the fundus macula is like a negative, AMD blindness is mainly caused by degenerative diseases of the macula. A broken lens can be replaced with a new one, once the negative is broken, there is currently no way to replace it with a new one, so blindness caused by AMD is irreversible.” According to a WHO study, AMD blindness accounts for about 8.7% of global blindness, and there are about 30 million AMD patients in the world, with about 500,000 people becoming blind due to AMD every year. In terms of treatment, there is no very effective way to treat AMD both at home and abroad. The PDT photodynamic therapy approved by FDA in 2000 and the launch of the new drug Ranibizumab developed in the United States in 2006 have given people a ray of hope. In contrast, China has not yet developed drugs with independent intellectual property rights, and some drugs that have been marketed abroad are not yet available to patients due to restrictions. “In our country, cataract is still high in the first place of blindness. However, cataract blindness is reversible blindness, and the problem can be solved through mature surgery. Coupled with the relatively high level of awareness of cataracts, the rate of cataract blindness is gradually decreasing, while the corresponding rate of AMD blindness will gradually increase. While it is true that the level of public awareness of AMD is related to the degree of economic and social development, it is also related to our lack of awareness of the dangers of AMD as well as insufficient popularization of science and education.” Chen Youxin said. Second, public awareness is generally not high Zou Haidong, deputy director of ophthalmology at the First People’s Hospital affiliated with Shanghai Jiaotong University, and others once made a survey showed that the prevalence of AMD in China’s population aged 50 years or older is 15.5%. The University of Hong Kong in October 2007 published a survey on the socio-economic impact of AMD on the families of patients, found that only 9.2% of the people have heard of AMD, but 92.9% and 78.4% have heard of cataract and glaucoma. Even in developed countries such as the United States, Canada, and Australia, the public’s familiarity with AMD is only 21% to 30%. There has been no systematic survey on the social awareness of AMD in mainland China. But Chen Youxin believes that the situation will not be very optimistic. A student studying at a major medical school in Beijing told Science Times, “I think 99 percent of people will never know about this eye disease if they are not specialized ophthalmologists, and even grassroots ophthalmology medical workers won’t know much about it.” “I knew there was a blinding disease like AMD, but I also didn’t know much about the factors that influence it or in terms of treatment progress.” Said a nurse who has worked in the ophthalmology department at Concord Hospital for nearly 20 years. A specializing in ophthalmic drug sales for nearly three years, Ms. Zheng talked about: “I only know that there is no good medicine to treat this disease, much less a good surgery can be completely cured, even tens of thousands of dollars of drugs only play a role in alleviating the role of the factors that can cause AMD, I really do not know.” Third, early detection and active prevention It is understood that AMD often develops in people over 50 years of age, and female patients are higher than men, clinically found to be engaged in long-term outdoor work, unbalanced diet, obesity, smoking, and family heredity is more likely to suffer from AMD. AMD is usually divided into dry and wet two kinds of, generally dry does not have much effect on vision, only to the late stage of the disease may be able to cause difficulty in reading and recognizing faces. Wet AMD, which develops from dry AMD, is an advanced form of AMD and can cause more vision loss than dry AMD. Chen Youxin has repeatedly said that it is important to raise awareness of it, detect it early, and treat it early. Although the exact pathological mechanism of AMD is not particularly clear, there are ways to prevent it, such as: don’t smoke, wear sunglasses when you go out when the sun is strong, eat more vegetables and fruits and fish, take proper supplements of health medicines rich in lutein and zeaxanthin, strengthen exercise, actively prevent high blood pressure and high blood fat, and eat less overly oily food, etc. These behaviors will slow down the AMD development of the disease.