Hope for new macular degeneration treatments buoys patients

Sometimes it starts with wavy vision. Objects appear distorted. Familiar faces go blurry. Sean Teare, a 48-year-old health care consultant from Duxbury, struggled to read menus in dimly lit restaurants. After a battery of tests, his optometrist told him he had age-related macular degeneration, or AMD, an eye disease that afflicts more than 9 million Americans and can cause serious vision loss. “It came as a complete shock,” said Teare.