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Research to Prevent Blindness

Hope through Research: Retinitis Pigmentosa

RPB researchers are uncovering causes of retinitis pigmentosa and creating new approaches for cures and treatments.

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Is Vitamin A Therapy Safe for All RP Patients? Vitamin A supplementation is often suggested for patients with RP.  For those with the ABCA4 gene, however, vitamin A supplementation may accelerate a process that precedes vision loss.  Read the abstract.

Discoveries related to causes of retinitis pigmentosa

  • Gene mutations responsible for RP (Abstract)
  • Environmental factors that could be influencing RP gene expression (Abstract)
  • The cascade of events within photoreceptor cells that lead to cell death 
  • How dying photoreceptor cells could be killing healthy neighboring cells (Abstract) 

Developments leading to screening for retinitis pigmentosa  

  • A disease chip for testing the DNA of patients with all forms of RP
  • Physical and genetic standards for classifying RP patients for clinical trials to test treatments (Abstract)

Advances leading to therapies for retinitis pigmentosa

  • Possible drugs to block the death signals within and between cells
  • Upcoming gene therapy for Usher syndrome 1B, a major type of RP
  • Refinements to retinal implants that would stimulate vision artificially [broken link, delete] (Abstract)

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