A research team, based at the Centre for Molecular Medicine (CeMM), Austrian Academy of Sciences, has reported a significant finding in how certain alleles of complement factor H (CFH) may cause age-related macular degeneration. The report, published in Nature, fills in a considerable part of the CFH story originally discovered by a number of groups in 2005. The identification of malondialdehyde (MDA) – a decomposition product of lipid peroxidation – as a ligand of CFH may now explain how the original risk association operates at a molecular level. More critically, the new research shows how CFH may prevent MDA-mediated inflammation in RPE and macrophage cells.