Three US citizens who all lost their eye sight as children, have gotten gene therapy to fix their eye problems, have reported life-changing results. Tami Morehouse, has recently talked about the joy she has experienced since getting gene therapy in both of her eyes. UK scientists and researchers are now saying that these treatments can maybe be used to treat other kinds of eye issues. All of these patients, have the same type of eye disorder, named Leber's Congenital Amaurosis. This rare genetic issue is inherited when a defect that encodes protein occurs and eyesight is effected. This disorder appears in the early stages of life, the symptoms that are shown with this disorder include very impaired vision, eye movements that are involuntary and very poor night vision. With this disorder, the cause is a mistake in more then 10 different genes. The effect of these abnormal genes is the retina does not function normally. Only a handful of people are being able to be treated by this new gene therapy treatment. The treatment consists of injecting one eye with the gene RPE65. Through this treatment the patients sight was improved, and in addition to treating the other eye their eyesight improved greatly. This discovery is important, because of the knowledge that we now know how to treat people for eye based issues through a gene based treatment that is not only safe but also successful.
