Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-4-2022
Abstract
Signaling of vision to the brain starts with the retinal phototransduction cascade which converts visible light from the environment into chemical changes. Vision impairment results when mutations inactivate proteins of the phototransduction cascade. A severe monogenically inherited blindness, Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), is caused by mutations in the GUCY2D gene, leading to a molecular defect in the production of cyclic GMP, the second messenger of phototransduction. We studied two patients with GUCY2D-LCA who were undergoing gene augmentation therapy. Both patients had large deficits in rod photoreceptor-based night vision before intervention. Within days of therapy, rod vision in both patients changed dramatically; improvements in visual function and functional vision in these hyper-responding patients reached more than 3 log10 units (1000-fold), nearing healthy rod vision. Quick activation of the complex molecular pathways from retinal photoreceptor to visual cortex and behavior is thus possible in patients even after being disabled and dormant for decades.
Recommended Citation
Jacobson, Samuel G; Cideciyan, Artur V; Ho, Allen; Roman, Alejandro J; Wu, Vivian; Garafalo, Alexandra V; Sumaroka, Alexander; Krishnan, Arun K; Swider, Malgorzata; Mascio, Abraham A; Kay, Christine N; Yoon, Dan; Fujita, Kenji P; Boye, Sanford L; Peshenko, Igor V; Dizhoor, Alexander M; and Boye, Shannon E, "Night Vision Restored in Days After Decades of Congenital Blindness" (2022). Wills Eye Hospital Papers. Paper 167.
https://jdc.jefferson.edu/willsfp/167
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
PubMed ID
36274938
Language
English
Comments
This article is the author’s final published version in iScience, Volume 25, Issue 10, October 2022, Article number 105274.
The published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.105274. Copyright © Jacobson et al.