Discovering the key gene causes vision impairment

Scientists at New York University, Columbia, USA reported three-quarters of vision impairment in the elderly - a major cause of blindness caused by two genes.

Age-related visual impairment causes blindness for millions of people each year (Photo: TTO) Previous studies have shown some genetic changes, known as H. factors that cause culprit. This vision degradation. Factor H controls the production of a protein that helps prevent the immune system's response to infectious disease.

People who are genetically possessed of many variants of H factor often lack the ability to control inflammation caused by infection. This leads to later vision deterioration in old age.

However, the study also found that one in three people has a deformed H factor, not suffering from visual impairment. Therefore, the researchers focused on another gene. The 1300 genetic analysis helped to identify this second gene, named factor B.

Factor B plays a role in stimulating the immune system to function. Due to the complementary role of these two genes, a distortion of Factor B can protect the body from visual degradation, although the body has the deformation of Factor H and vice versa.

The survey found that in 74% of vision impaired patients, there were either H or B factors or both. But no one has the distortion of one of these two factors.

Age-related vision loss causes blindness for millions of people around the world every year. This disease caused by macula degradation in the retina causes damage to the central visual area leading to blindness.

The discovery of British scientists opens up the prospect of treating blindness for the elderly worldwide in the near future.

KHANG LINH