Posts Tagged ‘eye exam’

Cornea is the transparent front part of the eye. It is a transparent, film-like tissue that covers the iris, pupil, and anterior chamber. Together with the lens, it refracts light, and accounts for almost two-third of the eye’s total optical power. There is a shortage of corneas for donation all over world. This is the reason why millions of people go blind every year. There are some rays of hope for such people.

A study was published in the Science Translational Medicine journal on August 25, 2010. According to it, an artificially fabricated cornea can be integrated with the human eye and stimulate regeneration. The study was led by May Griffith in the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. He said, “With further research, this approach could help restore sight to millions of people who are waiting for a donated human cornea for transplantation.”

Cornea is quite fragile, and gets easily destroyed by trauma or infection. Replacing it with a healthy cornea can restore vision. However, it depends upon the steady supply of cornea donors. During the research, Griffith and team, removed disease tissue from the corneas of 10 patients and replace them with biosynthetic implants which were designed to mimic a normal human cornea. They used a recombinant human collagen. It was synthesized in the laboratory to mimic human tissue. It was supplied by the San Francisco biotech film FibroGen Inc.

Griffith and colleagues monitored the patients for about two after the surgery was performed. They found that the cells and nerves from 9 of 10 patients showed complete re-growth. The cells had packed themselves into the implant. It resulted in a kind of synthetic cornea which looked functioned like natural, healthy tissue of the human eye. This biosynthetic cornea was also sensitive to touch. The human eyes, treated in this way, could produce tears. Six out of ten patients showed improvement in their vision. These patients showed no signs of rejection of the synthetic cornea. They did not need long-term immune suppression drugs to help their bodies accept the corneas. According to the study, the result is quite encouraging and has the potential to treat millions of needy people.