Hope For Those Suffering From Colorblindness

 

    Colorblindness, although it may appear like a small inconvenience to the majority of people who do not suffer from the disorder, it is severely life altering. Many career paths require proper color vision, for example fire fighters, electricians, and pilots. Even daily activities, like driving in the dark are extremely dangerous for individuals from colorblindness. This disorder controls the lives of over 10 million Americans. Due to the fact it is a X-linked gene, it predominates in males. It only affects 0.5% of females, however 8% of males. This trait causes confusion between blue and yellow or red and green. 

    One couple, Jay and Maureen Neitz have been excelling in their efforts to cure people of color blindness. Using gene therapy directed at the retina, new genes are administered that respond to color. These scientist together have practiced their techniques and surgically cured a squirrel monkey of colorblindness. Unfortunately, this method they established six years ago is too risky for human patients. Consequently, a nonsurgical treatment is demanded and researched by a team at the University of California. Their method of delivering new genes to the retina is through injections into the vitreous humor. This is a clear gel filling most of the eyeball, inevitably establishing it’s structure. Researchers claim this treatment method will reach human patients within a couple years.
    Gene therapy treatment research is skyrocketing. I cannot conceptualize the quantity of cures for genetic disorder scientist will safety establish in the coming years. In particular, colorblindness is an important genetic disorder to cure, because it affects the life's of even those without the disorder. Imagine a time you ran a red light because you saw a green arrow, now imagine how many people confuse these red and green lights due to their genetic predisposition. Many life's will benefit from this up and coming treatment.

Unaffected individuals see the number seventy four, while this of red-green deficiencies identify the number as twenty-one. Absence of a number foretells full color blindness 

 

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Colorblindness in Monkeys Cured

Researchers from Washington and Florida University used gene therapy to cure two squirrel monkeys of colorblindness. Colorblindness is very common in human beings, it affects about 3.5 million people in the US, 13 million people in India, and 16 Million people in China. Though colorblindness affects a large amount of people it is mostly found in men which causes them to be unable to distinguish red and green hues. Gene therapy is mostly used for disorders involving cone cells in adults which are vital for vision. With this information scientist decided to add red sensitivity to cone cells that were unable to or had difficulty picking up red colors. Once the red sensitivity was added to the monkeys cone cells the monkeys were than given similar colorblindness test that are given to humans, the color dotted circles with varying color and shaped dots inside. It took 5 weeks for the scientists start seeing improvement in the monkey color recognition, but when the monkeys began choosing the correct colors they were rewarded for their correct choice. With in one year the monkey were able to distinguish 16 different hues.

The biggest concern for researchers was how safely this procedure could be done in humans. Researchers from Florida University developed a gene transfer technique that used a non-harmful virus to assist in the transport of corrective genes to the desired protein location, they also wanted to use cone pigments that produce red and green in the retina. Researcher are also hoping that this gene therapy will be able to cure common types of blindness.

I choose to write about this article because I though it was interesting that researchers would fix colorblindness in monkeys and then use that information to help fix colorblindness in humans. I also read the article to find out if anyone who is colorblind said they would get the procedure done to fix their colorblindness.

http://phys.org/news172325926.html