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Three more patients treated with an experimental gene therapy approach have reported better vision, U.S. researchers reported on Monday in a study that lends further support to the approach.
The patients, all in their early 20s, reported markedly better vision after getting the treatment, Artur Cideciyan and James Wilson of the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues reported.
"Day vision improvement could range up to 50-fold from pre-treatment levels. Night vision was quite dramatic and ranged up to 63,000 times" better, Cideciyan said in a telephone interview.
Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, lend weight to similar results from rival teams all treating the same condition -- Leber congenital amaurosis, or LCA.
The condition is caused by a mutation in a gene called RPE65, and experts have long thought it is a good target for gene therapy. Gene therapy is an experimental field of medicine that aims to correct diseases by replacing faulty genes.
LCA damages light receptors in the retina. It usually begins affecting sight in early childhood and causes total blindness by the...
The patients, all in their early 20s, reported markedly better vision after getting the treatment, Artur Cideciyan and James Wilson of the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues reported.
"Day vision improvement could range up to 50-fold from pre-treatment levels. Night vision was quite dramatic and ranged up to 63,000 times" better, Cideciyan said in a telephone interview.
Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, lend weight to similar results from rival teams all treating the same condition -- Leber congenital amaurosis, or LCA.
The condition is caused by a mutation in a gene called RPE65, and experts have long thought it is a good target for gene therapy. Gene therapy is an experimental field of medicine that aims to correct diseases by replacing faulty genes.
LCA damages light receptors in the retina. It usually begins affecting sight in early childhood and causes total blindness by the...