Inactivity Of The Retinas Create New Treatment For Amblyopia: Research

Amblyopia or "lazy eye," has been described as the most common form of visual disability in children. At birth, human vision is poor but improves steadily during infancy and childhood due to maturity of the eye and brain connections.
Sometimes maturation can be affected when inputs from both eyes are out of balance; as a result of cataract in one eye, for example or a misalignment of the two eyes. In this situation, the connections from one eye fail to develop properly and vision through that eye is subsequently impaired (amblyopia).

Even if surgery is performed to correct the underlying cause of this impairment, the impact it has already on the brain's visual system cannot be reversed.
To correct this disorder, optometrists and ophthalmologists apply a patch or an eye drop (atropine) to the normal stronger eye in order to subdue it and enable the child to use the weaker amblyopic eye. The effectiveness of this treatment procedure is limited by variable outcomes and poor compliance. And if treatment is initiated after age 10, in severe amblyopia, it will be ineffective.

Now, a new research carried out by researchers in the Bear Lab at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT and Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Dalhousie University in Canada have described how visual acuity in animals with amblyopia can be restored by temporarily inactivating their retinas using anesthetic.

According to the research, the visual system can be "rebooted," offering hope for restoring the sight of the amblyopic patients. This approach is similar to restoring smooth and proper function of a computer by turning it off and allowing it to "reboot." The results from this study shows that temporarily turning off input from the retinas allow the brain to reboot and enable the amblyopic eye to come back "online."

Once the anesthetic had worn off, the visual acuity of the lazy eye was restored without any penalty to the normal stronger eye and according to the researchers; this recovery was permanent because the animals were monitored into adulthood.
The researchers are now planning to investigate if this study is effective in older subjects than conventional eye patches. This will enable them determine whether the treatment is suitable for clinical use in humans. They also plan to investigate how long the retinas have to be under inactivity to promote recovery.

Source: HealthCanal