Exciting research update for macular degeneration

The latest newsletter from the eye health charity Gift of Sight gives details of the latest research being carried out by the University of Southampton eye department.

On the 14th May, we were invited to attend the annual research lecture given by Prof Andrew Lotery and Dr Jay Self in Dr Jorn Lakowski in Southampton.

Gift of Sight raise funds from various charity events throughout the year to fund the ground-breaking research that the department completes.

After attending their annual research updates, we are always impressed and come away hopeful that novel treatments will be found. This is important to us, as our optician James has a family history of age-related macular degeneration known as AMD. This is the reason we began stocking Viteyes twenty years ago.

A few years ago, the idea of re-purposing existing medicines came up. These are established medicines that are already licensed, in this case for Alzheimer's Disease. The benefits of this are that the safe doses are known and any side effects are already reported from the wider population.

The amyloid-beta proteins found in the brain cells of Alzheimer's patients are also thought to cause macular degeneration. They build up in the cells at the back of the eye over time, in the retina. Coupled with a decrease in the lysosomes that remove waste products, these findings have a lot of potential. We asked a researcher about his work to improve the magnification, highlighting and viewing of these microscopic lysosomes.

The next phase of bringing this anti-Alzheimer's treatment to eye consultants has been reached.

'The team at Southampton are thrilled to share news of a partnership with a pharmaceutical company to investigate the effectiveness of an existing Alzheimer’s treatment in repairing vital cell functions in the retina. This represents an important step towards repurposing an approved drug as a potential treatment for dry age-related macular degeneration.'

In a further development, artificial intelligence is being looked into improving the process of diagnosis and staging of glaucoma and macular degeneration images to prioritise treatment pathways.

To read about all the valuable research in the latest newsletters for yourself, click here.