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By Rebekah Addy, Ivanhoe Health Correspondent
ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness for people older than 50, affecting between 25 million and 30 million people worldwide. In a study done on rats, special cells grown from stem cells have been shown to protect eyesight and have the potential help humans with eye diseases.
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Derived from human fetal stem cells, neural progenitor cells protected the eyesight of rats eye diseases similar to human diseases. Researchers report they are not sure how the cells protect the failing eye cells, but they may produce chemicals that influence the cells around them.
David Gamm, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Ivanhoe, "It seems that the cells in and of themselves are quite neuroprotective. They maintain their own identity, but they migrate within the outer and inner retina where they seem to confer some protection to the light-sensing cells that typically die in the course of degenerative eye disease."
Dr. Gamm said although there are still a number of unanswered questions, researchers are quickly moving toward clinical trials. "I think patients who are suffering from these kinds of diseases should take comfort in the fact that people are trying to come up with new ways to treat these diseases that in the past were considered hopeless diseases," Dr. Gamm said. "There is hope now, where in the past there was none."
Macular degeneration is often a slow, painless loss of vision. It is linked to deterioration of the eye tissue, which coincides with aging. Dr. Gamm said a healthy diet and exercise have been shown to protect people from this kind of vision loss.
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, which offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, click on: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
SOURCE: Ivanhoe interview with David Gamm, M.D., Ph.D.; Public Library of Science One, published online March 28, 2007
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