RetGen

The researchers conclude: "For patients with retinitis pigmentosa beginning vitamin A therapy, addition of docosahexaenoic acid, 1,200 milligrams per day, slowed the course of disease for two years. Among patients on vitamin A for at least two years, a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids (0.20 grams per day or more) slowed the decline in [vision loss]."
JAMA/Archives

At the conclusion of the clinical trial, subgroup analyses clearly documented that DHA accelerated the onset of visual benefit for those who were newly started on Vitamin A. But in participants who had already taken Vitamin A for a period of time long enough to achieve its full benefit, DHA did not add to that benefit.

Friedlander hopes that the sight of human patients with retinitis pigmentosa could be sustained with injections of their own stem cells, harvested from their bone marrow. In humans, the deterioration of the eye doesn't tend to start until adolescence or later. "We're running to the clinic with this," he says. He hopes to start work on patients as early as a year from now, if he can accumulate enough evidence that the technique is safe.
News @ Nature.com

In the case of sight, the primary visual cortex is responsible for taking in information, and also for forming remembered or imagined images. This dual function, Dr. Ramachandran and other experts say, suggests that normal vision is in fact a fusion of incoming sensory information with internally generated sensory input, the brain filling in the visual field with what it is used to seeing or expects to see. If you expect the person sitting next to you to be wearing a blue shirt, for example, you might, in a quick sideways glance, mistakenly perceive a red shirt as blue. A more direct gaze allows for more external information to correct the misperception.

"In a sense, we are all hallucinating all the time," Dr. Ramachandran said. "What we call normal vision is our selecting the hallucination that best fits reality."

With extensive vision loss, less external information is available to adjust and guide the brain's tendency to fill in sensory gaps. The results may be Thai dancers or monsters from a children's book.
The New York Times

If all goes according to plan, about half a dozen elderly people at risk of blindness will visit Dr. Lawrence J. Singerman's retina clinic in the coming weeks to receive injections in the whites of their eyes.

The experimental injections will contain a new type of drug based on a recently discovered genetic phenomenon, called RNA interference, that has excited scientists with its versatile and powerful ability to turn off genes. Having quickly become a standard tool for genetic studies in the laboratory, the technique is now set to be tested in people for the first time.
'Method to Turn Off Bad Genes Is Set for Tests on Human Eyes' (The New York Times, 14 September 2004).

"There's no doubt in my mind that this is the clear winner," said Mark A. Kay, a Stanford professor. He hopes to test an RNAi treatment for hepatitis C in cooperation with Benitec, an Australian company that now owns a company he founded.