The Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS) formula with lutein and xanthine can delay or reduce the progression of mild to severe macular degeneration but does not affect severe disease or individuals without macular degeneration.

“you may have seen in the drugstore they sell arids ARS formula for macular degeneration that stands for the age related eye disease study that was again a national Eye Institute initiative and first they looked at um C and beta katene with zinc and a little copper I guess they put the copper in because they were worried about copper deficiency with zinc supplementation um and then they got concerned about betacarotene so they did another study where they took beta carotene out and put in lutein and xanthine Powerful antioxidants and what they showed was that you could delay or reduce the conversion of mild macular degeneration to severe but it had no effect on severe disease and it also interestingly had no effect on people who didn't have macular degeneration it didn't prevent thement from going on to get it”