NEW YORK - Scientists for the very first time have used gene therapy to improve eye sight in people with a mild type of blindness, a development experts called it advance step for the experimental technique.

Some vision was restored in four out of the six young people who were treated with the technique, teams of researchers in the United States and Britain reported Sunday.Two of the volunteers who could only see hand movements were now able to read some lines of an eye chart after two weeks.

Stephen Rose, chief research officer of the Foundation Fighting Blindness said, “It’s a phenomenal breakthrough,” Experts said that technique has the capability to restore blindness from inherited eye diseases.

“I think this is incredibly exciting,” said Dr. Jean Bennett, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania and a leader of the Philadelphia study.“It’s the beginning of a whole new era of studies.”

Couple of teams of scientists, working apart from each other, each tested gene replacement therapy in three patients, suffering from mild hereditary eye disease called “Leber’s congenital amaurosis,” Until this disease is incurable, which symptoms appears early in infants and causes vision loss and at night blindness.

(more…)