CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - There’s new hope for people suffering from vision loss or dry macular degeneration thanks to drugs used to treat HIV.
“This is a huge unmet medical need. There are no approved treatments for dry macular degeneration in America or anywhere. We desperately need treatments for all these people who are potentially going blind from this disease,” Dr. Jayakrishna Ambati, professor of ophthalmology and director of the Center for Advanced Vision Science at the University of Virginia, said.
Dr. Ambati and researchers around the world analyzed multiple U.S. health insurance databases reaching more than 100 million patients over two decades. They discovered that Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (NRTIs), a drug commonly used to treat HIV, can potentially help prevent dry macular degeneration. This is a disease that can lead to vision loss and blindness.
“There’s an over 40% reduction in the risk of developing dry macular degeneration among people taking one class of anti-HIV drugs compared to people who don’t,” Ambati said.
Their research also uncovered a new way DNA can be created.
“There’s only two places where people thought DNA could be made: in the nucleus and in the mitochondria. What our paper showed is that in fact the DNA can be made everywhere inside the cell including in the cytoplasm,” Ambati said.
These findings, Ambati says, have major implications for researching chronic conditions, like dry macular degeneration.
“These DNA’s are what’s abnormal in macular degeneration and we have evidence that it’s also the case in these other chronic diseases as well,” Ambati said.
Through a company co-founded by Ambati called, Inflammasome Therapeutics, clinical trials will begin to develop safer derivatives of these drugs, known as Kamuvudines, to help prevent dry macular degeneration.
“That company, Inflammasome Therapeutics, is launching clinical trials this year, so we should know in the next year or two how beneficial they are in patients with this disease,” Ambati said.
The research was supported by UVA’s Strategic Investment Fund, the National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award, the National Institutes of Health’s National Eye Institute and other contributors.
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The Link LonkFebruary 03, 2021 at 07:55AM
https://www.whsv.com/2021/02/03/new-hope-for-a-treatment-to-prevent-dry-macular-degeneration/
New hope for a treatment to prevent dry macular degeneration - WHSV
https://news.google.com/search?q=dry&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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