It should be noted that the majority of patients in this trial who had a 30 Hertz ERG near 0.05 microvolt were legally blind. Although not a cure, for some patients with RP with larger pretreatment ERGs, vitamin A supplementation may make the difference whereby these patients retain some vision for their entire lives. Since the publication of our paper, we have been asked whether we can detect any treatment effect of vitamin A with respect to visual field area. We have subdivided our study population according to their intervisit variability with respect to field area between the screening and baseline examinations. Therefore for this subset of 125 patients representing all genetic types we could detect a significant beneficial effect of vitamin A supplementation on visual field area.
Vertical bars indicate SEs.
A randomized trial of vitamin A and vitamin E supplementation for retinitis pigmentosa. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of the Digital Journal of Ophthalmology is prohibited.