Saturday, January 31, 2015

Mutated gene in dogs could help treat blindness


In humans and dogs incurable blindness is usually from inherited retinal diseases. Since the ocular anatomy in dogs and humans are similar scientists found that studying  dogs can help them get a better understanding of these diseases and help in finding new treatments in blindness.

In a recent article from Science Daily, a group of scientists from the University of Helsinki and Michigan State University did just that. They conducted a study in which they looked at 324 blood samples of Swedish Vallhund dogs who are known to get retinal diseases. They found that the retinal disease was linked to a mutation in the MERTK gene. They also found that the retinal disease in these dogs  known as progressive retina atrophy were similar to the human disease retinis pigmentos. With further research these scientists are working towards a treatment that will inhibit the mutated gene in humans and dogs hoping to prevent blindness. I believe this is an interesting study and will hopefully help in the future with blindness in humans and animals. I am interested to see what the new studies will lead to in the future.


Secondary article





1 comment:

  1. I had no idea that the ocular anatomy in dogs and humans are similar.However, even though I do (for some reason) like the thought of dogs coming to our rescue.The thought of experiments being done on them just feels wrong. If they could do it on a rat, I'd be fine with that, after all they where bred for experiments. But unfortunately, they don't have a similar ocular anatomy with humans.

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