New drugs could stop blindness
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Associated Press
BOSTON — To doctors' amazement, experimental new medicines are rescuing people from the brink of blindness so they can read and drive and sometimes even regain perfect vision.
These lucky few are the first beneficiaries of an entirely new category of drugs that many hope will revolutionize the care of common eye diseases.
Several competing medicines are in development, all based on similar principles. They are designed to stop the top two causes of adult blindness — the "wet" form of macular degeneration, which affects the elderly, and diabetic retinopathy, the most common cause of blindness in working-age people.
Associated Press
Vision loss seems halted for most if they take the drugs soon after their symptoms begin. Some experience stunning reversals of what would have been inevitable blindness.
A doctor examines the retina of 77-year-old Ernest Hayeck, whose vision has undergone dramatic change — improving from 20-100 to 20-20 with his glasses on — after four treatments with the experimental drug rhuFab.
"I'm telling you, it's miraculous," says 76-year-old Eileen Russell.
Russell, of Worcester, lost vision in her right eye four years ago. In May, her left eye went bad, too, and she was declared legally blind.
But after four injections of one of the drugs her left eye is 20-25. She drives and reads and is thinking about returning to work as a nurse.
"Yesterday, I had to write a check," she says. "It looked beautiful, right on the line, with a regular pen. I can do all the little things again."
Around the country, about 70 patients with wet macular degeneration have been treated with the same drug as Russell, Genentech's rhuFab. About half were treated by Dr. Jeffrey Heier of Ophthalmic Consultants of Boston, who says, "I can honestly say I have never seen anything as exciting as this."
Experts caution that most of the results from the studies on this and similar drugs will not be known for at least a year or two. And for now, the treatments are available only to study volunteers.
None of the drugs are intended for the more common but less aggressive "dry" macular degeneration, nor will they work after eyesight has been gone for months.
Guessing the drugs' ultimate effectiveness based on early testing is risky. Still, doctors estimate that roughly one-quarter to one-third of people with newly diagnosed wet macular degeneration have had significant improvement in their eyesight. In most of the rest, loss of sight is stopped, at least temporarily.
One of Heier's patients, Edward Nowak, 81, an outdoor writer and photographer in suburban Needham, found vision in his left eye improved from 20-400 last November to 20-50 now.
"The results have been miraculous," Nowak says. "You would think the good Lord himself did this."
