How to protect yourself against a growing problem VISION LOSS

By Candy Sagon

Chicago Tribune (TNS)

Ask Americans to name the ailment they fear most, and blindness ranks at the top, along with Alzheimer’s and cancer, according to a recent survey by the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

And yet each year, 50,000 Americans go blind, nearly half from eye diseases that are treatable or preventable.

What’s worse, the number of Americans who are either blind or visually impaired is expected to double by 2050, most of it driven by an aging population and the growing number of people with chronic conditions that can cause vision loss, such as diabetes, says James Jorkasky, executive director of the National Alliance for Eye and Vision Research.

The challenge for vision experts is to make Americans aware of the things they can do to protect their eyesight, including getting a regular eye exam. Only half of the estimated 61 million Americans at high risk of losing their eyesight had an eye exam in the past 12 months – partly due to a lack of insurance coverage for preventive eye care and glasses, noted a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report last fall, but also because many eye diseases don’t show symptoms in the early stages, so people don’t realize they have a problem.

Doctors, too, may need to step up their game. A new study in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology found that in one of four cases, trained eye professionals missed the early, more treatable signs of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) – an irreversible loss of vision that affects 14 million Americans.

But there is some good news for those already diagnosed with eye disease, including new treatments and cutting-edge research that could bring hope to millions in the near future. There are also simple changes everyone can do to greatly reduce their risk of eye disease. Here’s what you need to know:

Cutting edge technologies

Glaucoma is caused by a buildup of damaging pressure within the eye and requires a daily dose of medicated eye drops to hold the disease at bay. Unfortunately, getting patients to follow that regimen daily for years is difficult, says Dr. Andrew Iwach, board chairman for the Glaucoma Research Foundation. Instead, clinical trials have started testing a thin polymer ring to be worn in the eye that would slowly release medication throughout the day. “It’s like drip irrigation, rather than flooding the eye,” Iwach says.

Using stem cells to regenerate healthy cells in disease-damaged eyes is the holy grail for researchers. This is especially true for incurable conditions that damage the retina, the layer of light-sensitive cells at the back of the eye.

Earlier this year, a Japanese man became the first person to receive retinal stem cells created from donated skin cells to stop his macular degeneration from getting worse.

And scientists at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles report promising results from transplanting stem cells from embryonic cells into patients who had been blind for decades from AMD and another disease. A study in 2014 reported that 10 of the 18 patients who received the cells experienced significantly improved vision.

The Argus II, a bionic retina approved by the Food and Drug Administration, is now being used by more than 100 people with retinitis pigmentosa and other related conditions. It also recently was implanted in the first person with macular degeneration.

This “bionic eye” uses a tiny camera attached to glasses that sends visual data to a microchip implanted in the eye, which then sends light signals to the brain. So far, the vision it provides is rudimentary, but patients say even some vision can greatly improve the quality of life for a blind person.

2017 Chicago Tribune

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