Philadelphia, Oct 24, SPA — Nine-year-old Corey Haas can ride his bike alone now, thanks to an experimental gene therapy that has boosted his fading vision with a single treatment, Reuters reported.
The gene therapy helped improve worsening eyesight caused by a rare inherited disease called Leber congenital amaurosis, or LCA, which makes most patients blind by age 40.
Twelve treated patients, including Corey, now have better vision, their doctors told a joint meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Pan-American Association of Ophthalmology in San Francisco on Saturday.
“All 12 patients given gene therapy in one eye showed improvement in retinal function,” Dr Katherine High of The Children”s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and colleagues wrote in a report to be released at the same time by the Lancet medical journal.
LCA causes the retina to degenerate and the researchers found that the younger the patient treated with the therapy, the better the effects.
“Before, I used to ride my bike just in front of the house and now I just ride around the neighborhood with no one watching,” Corey told a news conference.
While the experiment was meant mostly to show the treatment was safe, it showed remarkably strong effects, High and Dr Jean Bennett of the University of Pennsylvania found.
“This study reports dramatic results in restoring vision to patients who previously had no options for treatment,” said High. “These findings may expedite development of gene therapy for more common retinal diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration.”