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One study Published on Current biology showed that when treated with a retinoid therapyadult rodents suffering from genetic retinal diseases typical of humans have a significant improvement in vision
Genetic diseases of the retina
The retina is a transparent membrane of nervous origin, which internally covers the eyeball and is responsible for translating the light signal into an electrical potential that is sent to the brain through the optic nerve. In particular, the perception of weak light and the transfer of the signal to the brain is delegated to rods, photoreceptors located in the back of the eye and which contain particular pigments sensitive to light. In the study, the researchers focused on a genetic disease affecting the retina, Leber’s congenital amaurosis, which usually appears during the first six months of life and causes severe vision impairment, sometimes leading to blindness. This is the leading cause of inherited childhood blindness, probably generated by the mutation of some genes that regulate the ability of the retina to perceive light. In the study, however, the researchers considered adult rodents with the same disorder.
Treatment options depend on age
Some studies performed on children with Leber’s congenital amaurosis had shown that vision loss it could be mitigated by a treatment that involved direct injection of synthetic retinoids into the eye. It had never been verified, however, whether the same therapy could also work on adult patients. The reason is that the visual system of the brain is formed and strengthened during precise stages of development that occur in the first years of life. And, if the eye is not exercised during these critical periods, it is not certain that its visual circuits can be restored and recover their functionality later.
I study
To test whether the visual circuits of the brain, in mammals, can be recovered even after the end of development, the researchers administered a synthetic retinoid for seven days to adult rodents born with retinal degeneration due to Leber’s disease. Already nine days after the treatment, they noticed that the optic nerve activated a much greater number of neurons in the visual cortex, and for the next 27 days the treatment was able to partially restore light sensitivity, so much so that the rodents had recovered some typical light orientation behaviors. In other words, treatment with retinoid therapy seems to work, in the case of mice, even in adulthood. The result, the researchers write, would also bode well for humans: the critical window for determining the functionality of the visual system could be wider than previously thought.
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