I found this to be great news, as my mother suffered from Macular Degeneration. She was legally blind in one eye, and couldn't see out of the other! I was recently tested and thankfully got a clean bill of health from a Tulane opthamologist.
SCIENTISTS are turning human skin cells into eye cells by using stem cell research, with their sights set on unravelling a common but incurable form of blindness.
Age-related macular degeneration, which results from dying retinal cells, affects one in seven older Australians and costs the country's economy $5.15 billion a year, figures show.
But little is understood about how or why it occurs.
Enter a team at Melbourne's Centre for Eye Research Australia (CERA), which is taking skin cells from affected patients, turning them into stem cells and then into new retinal cells.
These are then compared with the patient's damaged cells, allowing the researchers to see in detail what's gone wrong.
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This is very cool news... there is also an implant (bionic eyes) called the ARGUS II for people with Macular Degeneration or Retina Pigmentosa (I think that's the name) but it is only approved in Europe at present.
Just google ARGUS II....
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