A paper published in Trends in Neuroscience by Nicolas G. Bazan, MD, PhD of the Neuroscience Center of Excellence at LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, reports on the role that the omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil play in protecting cells in the retina from degenerative diseases like retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration.
The paper is titled, Cell survival matters: docosahexaenoic acid signaling, neuroprotection and photoreceptors.
In these blinding eye diseases, photoreceptor cells (rods and cones) degenerate and die. Although this process can be triggered by many different things, one of the most significant protective factors may be the close association of retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells and the amount of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in them. The main role of RPE cells is photoreceptor maintenance-they conduct the daily shedding, internalization, and degradation of the tips of the photoreceptor outer segments. It now appears that RPE cells are also key to the survival of photoreceptor cells.
Both photoreceptor and RPE cell types are normally exposed to potentially damaging factors such as sunlight and high oxygen tension.