NHS Choices has conducted an assessment of press reports, including one in the Daily Express that “the UK could face a ‘bindness epidemic’ caused by progressive eye conditions that is being grossly underestimated by the NHS.”

The story is based on a study that estimates the number of people affected by advanced age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the most common cause of age-related sight loss in the developed world. AMD is thought to affect half of the 370,000 people registered as blind or partially sighted in the UK. The study estimates that the current UK prevalence of late stage AMD is actually 2.4% of the adult population (513,000 cases) and that this figure is set to rise by one-third over the next decade, totalling nearly 700,000 cases by 2020.

The study, funded by the Macular Diseases Society, was carried out by researchers from the University of London and the findings were published in the British Journal of Opthalmology. The assessment notes that the study findings were generally covered accurately in the papers, aside from the Daily Express’ alarmist headline predicting a forthcoming ‘blindness epidemic’. It adds that “while estimates provided by this research are higher than previous ones, they do not represent an ‘epidemic’ or an increase in cases of the disorder per se. Indeed, the risk of AMD increases sharply with age and the principal reason for the projected increase in cases by 2020 is the growing proportion of elderly people in the UK population.”