STOPPING BLINDNESS

BOSTON (AP) _ 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 two top causes of adult blindness _ the ``wet'' form of macular degeneration, which affects the elderly, and diabetic retinopathy, the biggest source of blindness in working-age people.

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. ``I'm telling you, it's miraculous,'' says Eileen Russell.

Russell, 76, 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'' kind of 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. Among others helped by rhuFab is Ernest Hayeck, a retired judge in Worcester, 40 miles west of Boston. One day last September, he discovered he was quickly going blind in his right eye. Doorways looked wavy, and everything was dim. Doctors said they could do nothing for him. With wet macular degeneration, vision in that eye would cloud to little or nothing within a few months at best. Hayeck was an active retiree, nine years off the state Superior Court but busy on the faculty of the National Judicial College and the board of Wendy's International. ``I was resigned to it,'' he remembers. ``I told myself I had had 77 good years.'' But when told of Heier's rhuFab study, he seized the chance, even though it meant getting shots in his bad eye. In October, the judge got his first, which he said was painless. By then his sight had failed to 20-100. ``I have achieved what I consider to be a miraculous result,'' says Hayeck. ``My eyesight came back with a vengeance. By the time I had the fourth treatment, I was 20-20 with my glasses on.''

Another 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,'' he says. ``You would think the good Lord himself did this.''

Dr. Steven Schwartz, chief of the retina division at UCLA's Jules Stein Eye Institute, has worked with several of the new drugs. ``For the first time in my career, I have actually been able to restore vision in patients who otherwise would never be able to get back their central vision,'' he says. ``It is a spectacular advance.'' His macular degeneration patients include the actor Dabney Coleman, who in a week on rhuFab went from 20-400 to 20-40 in his left eye and returned to playing tennis.

An estimated 200,000 new cases of wet macular degeneration are diagnosed in the United States annually. About 4 million U.S. diabetics have some degree of retinopathy, and 24,000 go blind each year. Both diseases result from misguided growth of blood vessels in the eyes. Since the new drugs attack this underlying problem, doctors hope they will work for both diseases.

The need for new treatments is expecially dire in wet macular degeneration, because nothing can be done for most victims. Blindness often follows within months or even weeks of the first symptoms. It occurs when leaky blood vessels sprout behind the retina, probably in a mistaken attempt to fix the slow breakdown of light-sensitive cells that occurs with age. These vessels ooze fluid and damage the fragile tissue that controls straight-ahead vision.

The new drugs vary, although most of them, like rhuFab, zero in on a growth-promoting protein called vascular epidermal growth factor, or VEGF. It appears to be an especially important trigger of damaging blood vessels in both forms of blindness.

Other drugs in testing include:
_Anecortave acetate from Alcon, a new steroid injected next to the eye once every six months for macular degeneration.
_Eyetech Pharmaceuticals' EYE001, which is injected into the eyeball like rhuFab for macular degeneration.
_Bausch & Lomb's Retisert implant, which exudes a steroid into the eye for up to three years and is being used for diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration.
_Lilly's LY333531, the only pill among the new drugs; used to prevent worsening eye disease in diabetics.

Development of these drugs is gratifying to Dr. Judah Folkman of Boston's Children's Hospital, whose three decades of pioneering research into blood vessels provided their scientific basis. Folkman's goal is a cancer treatment, since new blood vessels are necessary for tumor growth. ``Sometimes the most exciting thing in a scientist's career,'' he says, ``is an unexpected outcome from one's work.''

Nevertheless, experts caution that until the big studies are finished, no one can be sure how well the drugs will work. No one knows how long patients will need to take them, how often disease will return or whether the repeated eye injections have any hazards. ``The early data are very exciting, but it would be premature to extrapolate to cures or use other such adjectives to describe these isolated but impressive vision recoveries,'' says Dr. Karl Csaky of the National Eye Institute. ``Even if these drugs are as successful as the stockholders' wildest dreams, we'll still need something better,'' adds Dr. David Weissgold of the University of Vermont, ``because they won't make the problems go away.''

For elderly victims of macular degeneration, though, even a temporary reprieve from blindness is welcome. ``I'm reconciled to the possibility this is a gift that won't last forever,'' says Hayeck. ``I may lose it again. But I can't complain. I've gotten a good year out of this.''

EDITOR'S NOTE: Medical Editor Daniel Q. Haney is a special correspondent for The Associated Press.

On the Net:
Foundation Fighting Blindness, list of clinical trials: http://www.blindness.org/html/science/wclinicaltrials3.html
Eyetech site: http://www.eyetechpharmaceuticals.com
Genentech site: http://www.gene.com/gene/pipeline/status/opportunistic/amd

This a nice story to see people are being spared such a traumatic experience of going blind. If I was forced to make a choice between that or going deaf, there's no doubt which one I would choose.

Link to article?

Gross!

While it may sound "gross", my father has lost most of his sight from macular degeneration and I'm interested in anything that may help.

Russell, 76, 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.

SEVENTY-SIX and back to work ! Yes ! Yes ! Yes !
I hope she gets another 76 years in !

Link to article?

The story broke on a live feed from the Associated Press. By now, you may possibly find it posted at their site: http://wire.ap.org/public_pages/WirePortal.pcgi/us_portal.html

Otherwise, check out the links provided at the end of the article.

I have to admit, I have been a lurker for some time now, but this article drove me to register and send a reply. I am now 51 years old, and have always led a very active lifestyle. About six years ago, on Labor Day Weekend, I awoke with a slight blur in my left eye. I didn't think much of it, but by Tuesday, it was causing me some obvious vision problems. Cutting to the chase, I lost the center vision in my left eye due to wet type macular degeneration (or CNV, for you medical wonks). Losing depth perception at my age took a lot of getting used to, and a significant number of bruises from misses baseballs, lacrosse balls, and thrown key rings. After six years, I have learned to compensate for the impairment, but my doctors' prediction that it was just a matter of time until I lost the right eye have weighed on my mind. This article represents the first real possibility that I may not lose the balance of my vision. Nuff said.

I have to admit, I have been a lurker for some time now, but this article drove me to register and send a reply.

Welcome aboard. You were obviously meant to read this story. I hope you can be accepted into the clinical trials. Good Luck and keep us all posted on the outcome.

I read this article with great interest because my wife has been battling blindness due to Optic Neuritis for over a year now. Unfortunately, it looks like none of these treatments will work for O.N. But thank God there may be some relief for others.

Sebrina was an art director prior to these problems, and one day when her eyes were deteriorating, she shouted in frustration, "Blindness Sucks!"

She then set about putting that expression on T-shirts and selling them to others with similar problems. She's since expanded her line to include other conditions.

Check it out!

Two things:

I've had shots in the eye and it didn't hurt at all.

Also, for those who have "dry" macular degenertion as I have, anti-oxidant vitamins have given me a complete turn around for the past 9 years. I read about it, checked with two druggists to make sure I wasn't overdosing on vitamins, and started taking them three weeks before my next eye exam.

My doctor was DELIGHTED with the improvement in just three weeks in my vision. I told him about the vitamins, and he said to keep taking them. Now when I see him, he asks if I'm still taking the vitamins HE told me about. LOL!

Yes, please share with us, kitkat.

BTW, maybe if help was available for Rush to regain his hearing, then this might just be the answer for Stephen King, who is going blind.

The vitamins I'm taking currently are Protegra antioxidant. My drugstore doesn't always have the same brands, so I save the old bottle and always check to make sure that any new brand has the same vitamins and minerals as my previous brand.

This turned out to be helpful a few weeks ago when the druggist recommended a different brand. It had only 60 IUs of vitamin E, so I returned it and got Protegra which has 200 IUs of vitamin E. I'm not taking any chances since I've had so much success. I WAS getting One-A-Day antioxidant, but my drugstore discontinued it.

You can take one or two of them a day, but you should ask your doctor how many.

Also, so far I haven't had to have any further treatments by the retinal specialist since I started taking the anti-oxidants.

BTW, I suspect mind over matter helped because my vision began to go at a time in my life when I HAD to see to drive.
I also prayed.

Good luck to you.

I also prayed.

Apparently, those prayers were answered! Good for you and thank you for sharing your "natural" remedy with the others on this post.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.