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Oxford Eye Hospital

Dr. Robert MacLaren and colleagues at Britain's Oxford Eye Hospital perform a gene therapy experiment. Patients who took part say the experimental, approach improved their vision

An experimental therapy for a blinding eye disease showed early and surprising promise when it improved the vision of patients in an early trial that was only supposed to test its safety, doctors reported Wednesday.

The experimental gene therapy not only stopped the steady degeneration of the patients vision, but appears to have reversed some of the damage. And the effects have lasted two years in one case, British researchers report in the Lancet medical journal.

Wayne Thompson of Staffordshire in Britain saw the stars for the first time in years after being treated in April.

One night in the summer, my wife called me outside as it was a particularly starry evening. As I looked up, I was amazed that I was able to see a few stars, Thompson, 43, said in a statement.

I hadnt seen stars for a long, long time, he added.

It is still too early to know if the gene therapy treatment will last indefinitely, but we can say that the vision improvements have been maintained for as long as we have been following up the patients, which is two years in one case, says Dr. Robert MacLaren of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology at the University of Oxford, who leads the research team.

In truth, we did not expect to see such dramatic improvements in visual acuity and so we contacted both patients home opticians to get current and historical data on their vision in former years, long before the gene therapy trial started. These readings confirmed exactly what we had seen, he added in a statement.

Read more here:
In surprise result,gene therapy reverses blinding eye disease

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