Could this drug end progressive vision loss? 🤔 engineering
Sometimes there are fortuitous coincidences in life. Such is the case with this latest development.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that a drug once widely used to wean alcoholics off of drinking may help improve sight in those with vision disorders,The drug tested on mice was found to revive sight in humans with the inherited disease retinitis pigmentosa , and perhaps in other disorders, including age-related macular degeneration.Antabuse to the rescue
The researchers found that the drug disulfiram disrupts not only enzymes involved in the body’s ability to degrade alcohol, but also enzymes that make retinoic acid.
“Because the drug is already FDA-approved, the regulatory hurdles are low. It wouldn’t be a permanent cure, but right now there are no available treatments that even temporarily improve vision.”he researchers will partner with ophthalmologists to conduct a clinical trial of disulfiram on a small set of people with advanced, but not yet complete, retinal degeneration.