StemCell Therapy

Eye docs believethe treatment could help over 60,000 Brits who suffer from wet age-related macular degeneration

EXPERTS have developed a potential cure for one of the UKs leading causes of sight loss.

The therapy safely and effectively treated wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in trials.

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Wet AMD which affects 60,000 Brits is a painless condition that causes loss of central vision.

It develops when abnormal blood vessels leak fluid into the macula, found at the back of the eye.

This makes things look blurry and reading, driving and recognising faces becomes difficult.

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Patients currently require monthly injections into the eye that help to temporarily clear up the fluid.

But many find the process cumbersome, so give up, and eventually lose their sight.

Now scientists believe they have found a way of curing the condition with just one jab.

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Abnormal blood vessels form because patients produce too much of the growth factor VEGF.

Current injections contain a protein that binds to VEGF and inactivates it.

But this leaks from the eye over the course of a month and needs to be topped-up.

The new jab contains a modified virus like the common cold that penetrates cells in the eye and deposits a therapeutic gene.

This instructs the cells to produce a constant supply of the anti-VEGF protein, meaning it no longer needs to be injected.

Study leader Peter Campochiaro, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, in Maryland, US, said: This preliminary study is a small but promising step towards a new approach.

It will not only reduce doctor visits and the anxiety and discomfort associated with repeated injections in the eye, but may improve long-term outcomes.

Prolonged suppression of VEGF is needed to preserve vision, and that is difficult to achieve with repeated injections because life often gets in the way.

Even at the highest dose, the treatment was quite safe. We found there were almost no adverse reactions in our patients.

The phase one clinical trial involved 19 men and women, aged 50 years or older.

For safety and ethical reasons, the study group was composed of people for whom standard approved treatments were highly unlikely to be successful.

It meant that only 11 of the 19 had the potential for fluid reduction.

Of those eleven patients, four showed dramatic improvements, with the amount of fluid in their eyes dropping from severe to almost nothing.

Two other participants showed a partial reduction in the amount of fluid in their eyes and five showed no reduction in fluid levels.

All of the patients who failed to improve were found to be immune to the virus, meaning their body probably destroyed it before it had a chance to insert the gene.

Researchers warn this is likely to limit the therapys use because 60 per cent of the population is believed to be immune. They are continuing to investigate its constraints.

The findings are published in the Lancet medical journal.

More:
Scientists have developed a potential cure for blindness and it only takes a single injection - The Sun

This entry was posted on May 17, 2017 at 12:47 am and is filed under Blindness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |