by FERRIS JABR
SIGHT FOR SORE EYES: A second round of gene therapy for blindness worked just as well as the first. IMAGE/Garretttaggs55, Wikimedia Commons
Two doses of gene therapy restore vision to three women who were born nearly blind
Gene therapy has markedly improved vision in both eyes in three women who were born virtually blind. The patients can now avoid obstacles even in dim light, read large print and recognize people’s faces. The operation, researchers predict, should work even better in children and adolescents blinded by the same condition.
The advance, reported in the February 8 issue of Science Translational Medicine, extends earlier work by the same group. Between 2008 and 2011, Jean Bennett of the University of Pennsylvania’s Mahoney Institute of Neurological Sciences and her colleagues used gene therapy to treat blindness in 12 adults and children with Leber’s congenital amaurosis (LCA), a rare inherited eye disease that destroys vision by killing photoreceptors—light-sensitive cells in the retina at the back of the eye. Typically, afflicted children start life with poor vision, which worsens as more and more photoreceptors die.
Scientific American for more