The first trials for curing childhood blindness would be started by UK scientists and the gene therapy treatment would be tested on people suffering from rare inherited form of blindness in which case a single defective gene is responsible for degeneration of the retina of the eye and which stops functioning as the child grow up.
This form of blindness is referred to as Leber’s congenital amaurosis and it affects around one in eighty thousand children in Britain. These people become totally blind by the time they turn twenty. If the trials turn out to be successful then it could give a new vision to the people suffering from this defect.
Under the treatment patients would be injected with a virus modified for carrying correct version of the faulty gene and when it reaches the eye the virus would take the healthy gene to the cells and reverse the damage. Let’s hope the treatment turns out to be successful and offers life to number of blind people around the globe.
Via: guardian
