 Neovascular age-related macular degeneration, NVAMD, can cause severe vision loss among the elderly. Genetic risk factors for AMD include several variants related to the immune system and lipid metabolism. Obesity is a well-known predisposing factor for NVAMD, but how this metabolic disorder modulates angiogenesis in the posterior eye segment was largely unknown. In this issue of EMBO molecular medicine, Andriessen et al. show that high-fat diet induced obesity causes dysbiosis in the gut that drives retinal inflammation and pathological angiogenesis in a mouse model of laser-induced caroidal neovascularization, CNV. This article was authored by Rebecca Scholes and Thomas Langman.