Scientists initially recovered vision for blinded mice

According to a team of researchers at the University of California, 3 mice were blinded, not to see how blind they moved to find ways to heal their eyesight by glaucoma.

After the treatment process, the mice somehow regained some of their eyesight, which opened up a positive outlook for treating blindness for mammals, including humans.

Glaucoma (glaucoma) is an eye disease, caused by elevated fluid pressure in the eyeball, causing damage, destroying nerve cells. When patients do not detect these lesions early, and do not treat them early, it can lead to blindness. According to statistics, there are about 70 million people suffering from glaucoma in the world and there is no cure for blindness because of this disease.

In the eyes of mammals there are ganglion cells (ganglion cells) taking on the role of receiving images and transmitting to the brain, connecting between ganglion cells and the brain are the cylinders (axons) of length from 15 - 20cm (for human eyes). However, these pillars are not self-replicating when damaged, and scientists are looking for ways to overcome this. Accordingly, the team selected the sick mice on one side of the eye, covered the eyes well and gave the sick eye the extremely high contrast images - for example, fast-moving images of colored dots. Black and white - to stress this eye.

At the same time, they used drugs to reactivate mTORs (a protein that plays a role in cell growth and development) within ganglion cells of the defective eye. Although this study did not show a clear effect on all tested mice, the team noted that after 3 weeks of treatment, there was a clear recovery of the cornea in the blinded eye of the mouse. . To demonstrate, they sealed the healthy eye and gave the mouse a picture (with the blind eye) a small dot slowly growing - the image of a bird flying to the prey - then the mouse immediately ran to find hiding place.

The team said they still failed to heal the blinded eye of the mouse into a healthy one, but the effect of the above treatment was also a huge breakthrough, like climbing one. in many mountains. Hopefully, scientists will continue to achieve more success and can find ways to treat diseases that cause blindness in humans.