April 12, 2019 - Macular Degeneration
Hey folks, it’s Dr. Sam. I’m at Pololu lookout on the big island. I received a question yesterday. A lady has been diagnosed with macular degeneration. She happens to be from the UK, and she is asking: are there any new treatments out there?
Well, in this month’s BBC a group of ophthalmologists from the University of Oxford is working on a lady who has macular degeneration. They injected a synthetic gene into her retina, which produced a harmless virus. This allowed these retinal cells to then produce a protein to stop the retina from degenerating.
So they’re very hopeful that this treatment could be something that could be used in the future as another tool to prevent or reverse macular degeneration.
So that’s my message for today. Thank you so much for tuning in, take care.