Dysregulation of microbiota gut-retina axis in neovascular age-related macular degeneration: beneficial ocular effects of a lutein, zeaxanthin and saffron based prebiotic supplementation

This work investigates the effects of a prebiotic mix containing lutein, zeaxanthin, and saffron, recognized for their anti-inflammatory properties, on ophthalmological and microbial parameters in neovascular AMD (nAMD) patients. Overall design: Total DNA was extracted from the stool of healthy old subjects and ADM (Age-related macular degeneration) patients. Moreover, the total DNA was extracted from stool samples of the same ADM patients after the completion of the prebiotic treatment. The total DNA was amplified to collect amplicons of variable V3–V4 regions (primers 341F and 805R) of the bacterial 16s rRNA gene and sequenced with MiSeq (2x300bp) Illumina platform.