ALB and age-related macular degeneration: A particularly important result of this study is that, in each cohort, a subgroup of metabolite changes tended to differentiate the controls from the patients diagnosed with early AMD stage (namely acetate, creatine, dimethyl sulfone, cholesterol, HDL-choline and unsaturated fatty acids for Coimbra subjects, and albumin, histidine, glutamine and also unsaturated fatty acids for Boston subjects).