Word: macular
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Julia Levy of Vancouver still remembers the day in the mid-1980s when her heart broke. She was sitting across the dining-room table from Dorothy Coppens, her vibrant 85-year-old mother, who had just been found to be suffering from macular degeneration, an incurable deterioration of the central portion of the retina that is the leading cause of blindness in people 60 and older. "Your face is just a brown smear," Coppens told her daughter. "I guess I'll never see your face again...
Like a lot of folks, Levy had never heard of macular degeneration. Unlike most, she was in a position to do something about it. One of the co-founders of a biotech company called QLT PhotoTherapeutics, Levy worked with David Dolphin of the University of British Columbia to develop Visudyne, a drug that uses light rays to combat the severest form of the disease. Although their research couldn't help Levy's mother, who died in 1996, it has passed muster with a scientific advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Last week the panel recommended that...
...cure. At best, it preserves the status quo. It will not restore vision that has already been lost. Nor does it work for everyone. Company officials estimate that only one-quarter to one-half of the 200,000 or so Americans who develop the severest form of macular degeneration each year will benefit. But for them, it could be the window on the world that allows them to maintain their independence...
...knows what causes macular degeneration. In 90% of the cases involving older people, the retina wears thin and abnormal deposits called drusen start to appear. This is the so-called dry form of the disease, in which vision deteriorates slowly, if at all. Still, it should be checked periodically since complications can occur...
Visudyne works only on wet macular degeneration, and produces the best results in patients whose retinal abnormalities occur mostly in what is known as the classic pattern. Doctors inject the drug into a vein in the patient's arm; from there it quickly spreads through the body. The drug concentrates wherever new blood vessels are being formed. But it doesn't start destroying those blood vessels until it is activated by pulses of light from a non-heat-generating laser. Since the light is shone into the eye, only the abnormal growths in the retina are targeted. Patients have...