Small Fish Making A Large Impact Against Infant Blindness!
Leber's Congenital Amaurosis, or LCA, is a congenital condition that causes blindness in infants that currently has no treatment. Parents of children with LCA each contribute a defective gene to their offspring which causes abnormal development of the retina, the structure in the back of the eye that detects light and color.
Researchers are using zebra fish, this model has retinas similar to humans, to develop drugs to prevent oxidative damage to the retina as seen in LCA, and improve the survival of photoreceptors. The focus of the study using the fish will be to study the disease on the cellular and molecular level, giving hope of sight to many small children struck by this disease. Please click below for more on the study and LCA.