Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of making Apolipoprotein M available through the NHS on the prevention of macular degeneration.

The Department has not made an assessment. There are no approved medicinal products in the United Kingdom with apolipoprotein M, and there is no specifically approved product for macular degeneration that is known to act mainly by increasing apolipoprotein M.

If a company were to develop such a medicine, they would need to apply for a licence to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. The medicine would be assessed for safety, quality, and efficacy before it could be granted a marketing authorisation in order to be appraised by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence for routine National Health Service use.