Drugs being developed to treat Alzheimer's disease might help prevent one of the most common causes of blindness, according to research published yesterday.
British eye specialists have shown for the first time that nerve-destroying proteins linked to Alzheimer's play a key role in glaucoma which can cause irreversible blindness and affects over half a million people in the UK. The discovery suggests Alzheimer's and glaucoma are triggered by a similar process in nerve cells.
Scientists at the Institute of Ophthalmology at University College London have conducted successful trials in which animals with glaucoma were treated with drugs intended to prevent proteins called beta amyloid building up in the brain. A small-scale trial in humans is set to go ahead later this year or early in 2008.
The link between the two diseases suggests glaucoma may be used as an early warning sign of future Alzheimer's, and monitoring the health of nerves in the eyes could help gauge if an Alzheimer's patient is responding to treatment. Glaucoma is associated with abnormally high pressure in the eye, which causes damage to the optic nerve. Treatment focuses on reducing pressure, but up to a third of sufferers continue to suffer loss of vision even after pressure returns to normal.
The UCL team, led by Francesca Cordeiro, used a new technique to highlight retinal nerve cells damaged by glaucoma, and found that a build-up of beta amyloid proteins was often to blame.
Tests in rats revealed that administering a drug called Bapineuzumab, which is undergoing clinical trials for Alzheimer's, stopped the proteins building up, they report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.