November 01, 2005.
United Press International.
Case Western Reserve University scientists are testing a treatment for an eye disease that causes irreversible congenital blindness in millions of people.
A team led by Krzysztof Palczewski, chairman of pharmacology at the Cleveland university's school of medicine says it has successfully tested two new treatments in mice.
The researchers said the treatments "provide highly effective and complementary means for restoring retinal function in this animal model of human hereditary blindness."
The disease studied is Leber congenital amaurosis, which is characterized by severe loss of vision at birth. Its causes are not fully understood, but scientists believe the disease might be due to abnormal development of photoreceptor cells in the retina, extremely premature degeneration of these cells, or lack of essential metabolic ingredients necessary for vision in the cells.
The research is detailed in this month's open access journal PLoS Medicine.
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