blindness

New oral medication may help cure blindness: Study

New oral medication may help cure blindness

Scientists have revealed that a new oral medication is showing significant progress in restoring vision to patients with Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA).

According to scientists of Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC), this is the first time that an oral drug has improved the visual function of blind patients with LCA, which causes visual impairment ranging from reduced vision to complete blindness, has remained untreatable.

Robert Koenekoop, director of McGill Ocular Genetics Laboratory at The Montreal Children’s Hospital of the MUHC, said that this treatment is giving hope to many patients who suffer from this devastating retinal degeneration.
The study involved 14 participants from around the world with LCA ranging in age from 6 to 38 years old. Their blindness was caused by either mutations in the genes RPE65 or LRAT, leading to a serious defect in the retinoid cycle.

The retinoid cycle is one of the most important cycles in the human retina because it produces a molecule called 11-cis retinal which has the special capacity to capture light and initiate vision. Patients with RPE65 or LRAT mutations cannot produce this crucial molecule thus the retinal cells cannot create vision, and slowly die.

The study found that 10out of the 14 patients expanded their visual fields; others improved their visual acuity. The research team performed special brain scans of the visual cortex, which showed marked improvements in brain activities in patients who also improved in field size and acuity.

The study was published in the scientific journal The Lancet

source: yahoo news

 

Cosmetic fillers can cause blindness when injected into the forehead

Injecting fillers into the forehead to remove wrinkles could lead to permanent blindness, according to a new report.

Scientists said that injecting fillers around the eye area for facial rejuvenation could cause irreversible damage.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of fat, collagen and other special cosmetic products, but only if they are injected in the middle parts of the face – such as around the mouth
But doctors often use the substances as “off-label” to smooth out wrinkles around the eye and on the forehead, said study author Dr Michelle Carle, an ophthalmologist at Retina Vitreous Associates Medical Group in Los Angeles.

The fillers can then accidentally get into small blood vessels on the face, and find their way into the eye’s artery and block its blood supply, Dr Carle told Live Science.

“While this complication is very rare, it is very significant. A bruise will go away, but vision loss is permanent,” she said.

Dr Carle and her colleagues treated three patients who permanently lost their vision in one or both eyes after undergoing cosmetic procedures, according to the report published in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology.

One woman in her mid-40s lost the sight in her right eye after she received an injection of bovine collagen and a dermal filler product called Artefill to remove her forehead creases, the researchers said.

Another patient, a man in his 30s, lost some vision in his left eye following an injection of a gel called hyaluronic acid. The blood supply to parts of his retina had been blocked, according to the report.

And a woman in her 60s experienced severe loss of vision after receiving fat injections around her hairline, the researchers said.

Any injection done in the eye area poses a risk of material entering the intricate web of arteries and blood vessels surrounding the eye. The visual effects of a blockage are devastating and irreversible in otherwise healthy patients, the researchers said.

Complications from these cosmetic procedures are rare, but cases of blindness, stroke and even death have been previously reported, according to the report.

“We recommend that blindness or significant visual loss be added as a risk when discussing these procedures with patients, because these are devastating consequences,” the researchers said.

Source: The Independent

Cells from Dead people’s eyes helps blind people

Researchers have suggested that cells taken from the donated eyes of dead people may be able to give sight to the blind.

Tests in rats showed that the human cells can restore some vision to completely blind rats.

The team at University College London said similar results in humans would improve quality of life, but would not give enough vision to read.

The team extracted a special kind of cell from the back of the eye. These Muller glia cells – a type of adult stem cell – is capable of transforming into the specialized cells in the back of the eye and could be useful for treating a wide range of sight
disorders.

In the lab, the cells were transformed into rod cells that detected light in the retina, and injecting the rods into the backs of the eyes of completely blind rats partially restored their vision.

Brain scans showed that 50 percent of the electrical signals between the eye and the brain made a recovery after the treatment.

The study has been published in journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine.

Source: Zee News

Sleeping on one side may worsen glaucoma: study

In a new study from South Korea, people with worsening glaucoma on just one side were also more likely to sleep with the affected eye facing downward.

The researchers say that position raises the eye’s internal pressure and probably hastens deterioration of the eye.

In glaucoma, the optic nerve is often damaged by increased intraocular pressure. The damage causes tunnel vision and eventual blindness.

According to the World Health Organization, glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness around the world, after cataracts.

“There is prior data from the early nineties, suggesting that in patients with glaucoma who sleep on their sides, the eye in the dependent position tends to have greater damage of the optic nerve,” Dr. Jeffrey Schultz told Reuters Health in an email.

Schultz directs Glaucoma Service at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York and is an associate professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

He was not involved in the study, but said it is “important in letting us know that there is potential for behavior changes in lessening the risk of blindness from glaucoma.”

The study was led by Dr. Kyoung Nam Kim, a researcher in the Department of Ophthalmology at the Chungnam National University hospital in Daejeon.

Treatments to decrease pressure in a patient’s eyeballs can slow progression of glaucoma in some cases. But other patients continue to progress even when intraocular pressure appears to be under control, Kim’s team writes in the American Journal of Ophthalmology.

Since lying down raises the pressure in the eyeball, and sleeping on one side consistently more than the other could be problematic for the eye on that side, the researchers decided to investigate whether a side- sleeping position might be part of the problem.

Kim and colleagues examined the sleeping habits of 430 glaucoma patients who had a visual field loss that was worse in one eye.

They found 132 of the patients preferred to sleep on one side. Of these patients, 67 percent usually slept with the worse eye downward.

They also compared the sleeping habits of patients who had glaucoma with elevated intraocular pressure (high-tension glaucoma) with those with normal pressure (normal-tension glaucoma).

Approximately 66 percent of the patients with normal-tension glaucoma preferred to sleep with the worse eye downward and 71 percent of the patients with high-tension glaucoma slept that way.

The results don’t prove that sleeping position accounts for worsening glaucoma on one side.

But they at least verify a link “between the preferred sleeping position and asymmetric visual field loss between eyes,” the authors write.

“Unfortunately, it is very difficult to control your body position during sleep,” Schultz said.

“Certainly, if one has severe damage in one eye it would seem to make sense to attempt to avoid sleeping on your side with that eye down,” he said.

It may help to sleep on the side with less eye damage – or on your back. But Schultz warns that sleeping on your back may not be the answer for people who are predisposed to sleep apnea, which is another risk factor for worsening glaucoma.

At this point there is no way to improve visual field loss in patients with glaucoma once it occurs, he said.

“The best thing that patients can do to lessen the risk of worsening, is to be compliant with the medical regime and to follow up as directed by the patient’s physician,” Schultz said.

Source: Reuters