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Gene Therapy Restores Sight To Blind
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like we have found a cure for genetic blindness (clinical trial — abstract — paper [PDF] — ABC News video). This gene therapy treatment increases both cone and rod photoreceptor-based vision. These engineered viruses are implanted to do our bidding to restore vision. Clinical trials on 6 children and young people proved the therapy and didn't find any notable side effects." Any blind person, especially any adapted and competent one, who wants to gain the sense of sight would be well advised to study Oliver Sachs's classic piece "To See and Not See."
Braille? Text to speech? Any one of the other multitude of ways that visually impaired people deal with daily to get through life meant for people with vision?
Not to be blunt, but seriously...
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Losing sight has always been my greatest fear. I understand a lot of blind people can live perfectly fine lives, but I can't think of many worse futures. (I know the news are about genetic blindness, but still).
The day someone comes up with a way of completely bypassing the eyes, for example by perfecting the technology of connecting cameras directly to the brain, will feel as important for me as the day someone finds a way of curing all medular wounds.
It may sound stupid but one of the few reasons I've got for accumulating more money is being able to pay the medicine I hope will exist by the time my body starts failing in those kind of ways.
"All three patients showed a statistically significant increase in visual sensitivity at 30 days after treatment localized to retinal areas that had received the vector."
Well, one notable side-affect of the virus was improved vision.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/colortherapy/
I have a feeling this will be up for a Nobel Prize. It was seriously groundbreaking work and the entire vision science community is excited about it.
My children might have an incurable genetic blindness (we haven't tested them) that causes progressive blindness. After researching a bit, I found that the blind and visually impaired can use computers quite well with screen readers, but there wasn't a lot of accessible software -- especially games. http://www.audio-games.net/ was a great resource and helped me design an accessible audio-RPG called Entombed. http://www.blind-games.com/ - Full disclaimer: my site. I think the biggest hurdle (obvious from reading some of these comments) is that there isn't a lot of awareness that the blind can navigate and use computers.
after a quick look at the paper linked in the article (Identifying photoreceptors in blind eyes caused by RPE65 mutations: Prerequisite for human gene therapy success), it is clearly not about gene therapy in humans. it is a study of the thickness of the retina in humans homozygous for a mutation in a specific retinal gene. as the title says, it is a prerequisite for gene therapy.
the actual paper, Human gene therapy for RPE65 isomerase deficiency activates the retinoid cycle of vision but with slow rod kinetics, can be found here. It concerns the same gene, incidentally.
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch.
I haven't noticed much improvement along those lines (I haven't done any empirical studies myself) although my night vision is superb compared with how it was at any time prior to the surgery.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Nothing to see here move along..... wait a second...
Doctors do Massage in Longview WA now, who knew?
Well if I recall correctly the military tried doing something like this(sans gene therapy) with fighter pilots during WWII. There was a research project to administer fighter pilots a chemical that would make their eyes sensitive to infrared light(night vision infrared not thermal infrared) so they would be better adapted to fighting at night. I don't think much became of it though. Now the only problem with doing this with gene therapy is the effects would be permanent.
Are you sure it is infrared? I had heard that loss of your lens let you see further into ultraviolet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphakia).
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
ttp://www.livescience.com/history/090429-military-experiment-1.html
The U.S. Navy wanted to boost sailors' night vision so they could spot infrared signal lights during World War II. However, infrared wavelengths are normally beyond the sensitivity of human eyes. Scientists knew vitamin A contained part of a specialized light-sensitive molecule in the eye's receptors, and wondered if an alternate form of vitamin A could promote different light sensitivity in the eye. They fed volunteers supplements made from the livers of walleyed pikes, and the volunteers' vision began changing over several months to extend into the infrared region. Such early success went down the drain after other researchers developed an electronic snooperscope to see infrared, and the human study was abandoned. Other nations also played with vitamin A during World War II - Japan fed its pilots a preparation that boosted vitamin A absorption, and saw their night vision improve by 100 percent in some cases.
I have retinitis pigmentosa which affects me in a number of different ways. At the moment it's the night blindness that's the most problematic. But as the disease is a degenerative one and as there's no way to predict (or even give a rough estimate of) the time when I will be fully blind, not a day goes past when I don't think of what it will be like to be completely in the dark. I read these stories all the time and they're all like stories on holographic storage tech: Just 5-10 more years and it'll be here for me to enjoy...
I wish, but ...
When the rods/cones exist in the retina, and the nervous system connections to the brain, but the photo-chemical pathways inside the rods/cones are blocked, this therapy unblocks the chemical error, letting the other components work.
For myopics the damage is different. Our eyeballs are not spherical, so the lens and cornea, matched to a spherical retina surface cannot focus incoming light "incorrectly" onto our distorted retinas. our best bet is still prosthetic. Although the cornea can be hacked up to make some correction, it is not really the issue (it is for astigmatism). What we need are lenses designed for non-spherical retinas. This can emulated by glasses/contacts, but the real solution would be corrective lens implants.
Current materials are not as flexible as natural lenses, so cannot be complete replacements. However, lenses can be shaped for accurate vision at longer than reading distances, or within reading-to-desktop range. As we get older and cataracts appear, there is a stronger justification to replace the lenses, and many older adults no longer have to wear glasses due to replacement lenses. I'm really hoping that by the time I get to replacement, the materials will have been improved so that I can not only stop wearing contacts, but get rid of the reading glasses, too.
There's a "design flaw" in the lens. Unlike bones, that have cells that both remove and replace bone, the lenses only have cells that smooth the surface by adding more material. After a few decades, the lens is too thick to be stretched for close focus, so we lose that ability, although distance vision may still be as good as when young.
Some people can tolerate a pair of replacement lenses, one near-focusable for reading and one far-focusable, between them covering the full range of vision. IIRC, the dominant eye is close-focusable. Contacts are available in the same arrangement, but, again, not everyone can tolerate them.
Kitchen tours. $10 a pop. Kids unwelcome.
Well, it definitely was in Britain, when the cavity magnetron was put into use in night-fighters. It provided the first centimetric radar, capable of detecting fighters and even breached submarine periscopes, while being small enough to mount in a fighter. To explain the sudden increase in the nocturnal accuracy of the RAF, the old "carrots help you see in the dark" myth was spun, which had the added benefit of encouraging children to eat healthy food.
Um, it takes a fuck load more than SIX kids to /PROVE/ something. SIX isn't anywhere close to statistical significance, nor does it even remotely demonstrate safety. Proven/proof are VERY big words and shouldn't be thrown around lightly. These preliminary results may be encouraging, but are FAR from proof. Especially, in the medical field.
Blind people don't read slashdot. They edit it.
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