One of the best things about the end of Summer here is vine-ripened tomatoes. Our plants did not do well this year but I do take handouts.? I have been being given tomatoes for the last two weeks.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I think vine-ripened tomatoes are truly wonderful on BLTs. With mayo. Lots of mayo. I have been eating BLTs for the last two weeks. With lots of mayo; that is. [Lin/Linda: BLT = bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich’ mayo = mayonnaise.]
Bacon and mayo mean fat. And what did Lin send me today but an article on fats and AMD. What?!? Do they have a camera in this house? Last time this happened I was going to stand in the sun all day at Briggs Blues Fest. “Sunburn correlates with AMD.”
Now, they are after my BLTs? (With mayo!) Is nothing sacred?
Joan Miller – I actually know a Joan Miller and I bet a lot of you do, too. Just all different ones – is at it again up there in Massachusetts. She is apparently the expert on eyes and fat. Dr. Miller is the person who was experimenting with statins to try to lower risk of AMD. In fact, she co-authored another paper on AMD, fats and statins just this past May. I am printing it off now as we ‘speak’. It is, however, 26 pages of text so don’t expect a quick turnaround time.
What is causing the latest ripple is some very preliminary work Miller is doing on blood testing. The Macular Society ran an article on blood biomarkers for (wet? Not finding that in the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Hospital press release) AMD. Apparently they found 87 fatty proteins, lipids, that were in much higher quantities in the blood of people with AMD. With early warning, different interventions may be used to slow down the progression of the disease.
Which interventions? Dunno, but by the time the Massachusetts study is replicated a few times, we may have something to fight fat in your eyes. Lowering the fat in your eyes means less fatty, ‘eye poop’ (aka drusen) to get between your RPEs and Bruch’s Membrane. That means fewer starving retina cells sending out “Feed me!” signals. Since the “Feed me!” signals are actually the VEG-F, vascular endothelial growth factor, a signaling protein of the body, if we get into the process and interrupt it before the VEG-F (read: “Feed me, Seymour!” signaling) is released, we will not need anything to rid our eyes of the protein. No anti-VEG-F required. [Lin/Linda: The quotes “Feed me!” and “Feed me, Seymour!” are references from Little Shop of Horrors that she used in a previous page.]
In short: no fat = no drusen = no starving retinas = no ”Feed me!” aka VEG-F signal = no anti-VEG-F shots.
Just to quickly jump across to Europe, I want to mention a lot of the preliminary work for this study was done by a Dutch team headed by Eveline Kersten. Dr. Kersten did a pretty exhaustive literature review of all of the compounds found in fluids from AMD patients. Her literature review gave other researchers an idea of what compounds they should look for in the blood of AMD patients and non-AMD patients to do comparisons. Everyone builds on what others have done. We are in this together.
That is it for now. One other battlefront has been opened. The enemy for this one is fatty eyes. [Lin/Linda: notice that Sue didn’t say anything about giving up her BLTs with “lots of mayo”. ::grin::]
written September 15th, 2017
Next: Practice What I Preach
Home