Light is close to the infrared range can repair retinal damage.
Numerous cases of poor-quality vodka poisoning, which in large quantities are still in our country, as a rule, affect vision. For example, in cases of poisoning with methanol, a person goes blind and restore his sight until now was impossible, because of the death of mitochondria in the cells of the retina. But now, it seems, found a method of treatment of blindness and regeneration of cells of the retina, which is exposed to light with a wavelength of 670 nanometers.
The emergence of the laser not only led to the rapid development of science and coil techniques, including medicine and especially in ophthalmology, but new problems in the same sector. It was found that one and the same beam can harm as well as cure. It all depends on what kind of device it emits.
Ophthalmologists are more and more cases of retinal damage state the eyes of the people under the influence of the laser. Bright and eye almost invisible in the infrared radiation coming from the laser beam in contact with the eye may cause damage to the retina and cause blindness. But it is a laser beam.
U.S. Agency for Research Design (Advance Research Projects Agency) funded research to find treatments for people whose eyes were damaged by lasers. A lot of U.S. military already have experienced it?
Charms | high-tech, mostly helicopter pilots.
If infrared technique works at home, it may cause damage to a wide range of eye diseases.
But with directed and proper use of infrared light can heal all kinds of injuries and wounds, and is already considered questions about the treatment of their mouth ulcers in children undergoing chemotherapy.
In the late 1990s, studies on cells in the laboratory have shown that near-infrared rays can increase the range of activity of the mitochondria are responsible for the food inside the cell and its vital functions.
Treatment requires a high intensity light, but instead of lasers, the scientists used a powerful light-emitting diodes. Lasers tend to damage cells, whereas such diodes can emit light which is less harmful to the cloth (New Scientist, 25 September 1999, p 20). Now, Harry Whelan, a neurologist from the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, and colleagues tested the diodes on the extent of damage to the eyes.
In the study, the results of which are announced in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the rats were given high doses of methanol, which caused their blindness. This material was converted in the body into formic acid - poison which takes mitochondrial activity. Within hours, the cells of the retina of rats were left without power and optic nerves began to die.
As a result, the animals were completely blind in one to two days.
However, when the eyes of rats irradiated by light with a wavelength of 670 nm for 105 seconds at 5, 25 and 50 hours after they are blinded by methanol, 95 percent of the rats returned again vision. Especially noteworthy is that the retina of these rats looked exactly the same way as in normal rats that were not blinded. As a result of irradiation has been some regeneration of tissue, and neurons, axons and dendrites reconnected and restored vision.
The research results have raised the hope that it will be possible to cure and people from previously considered incurable blindness caused by the death of mitochondria under the influence of poison. Scientists believe that the laser retinal damage, other than areas where the cells were completely disrupted, can also be treated this way.
Harry Whelan has tested his method on 30 children suffering from mucositis, painful side effect - a consequence of the course of anticancer chemotherapy. The children had painful sores in the mouth and throat and was unable to eat or drink. Treatment by this method are eliminated mucositis and is now used to prevent it.
The results of these studies have been published in the journal Clinical Laser Medicine and Surgery in December last year. It has been approved and is now undergoing further testing in hospitals.
What is not yet clear exactly - it is how light stimulates healing. But Britton Chance of the University of Pennsylvania showed that about 50 percent of near-infrared light absorbed by mitochondrial proteins - chromophores. Whelan and his colleagues think that light increases the activity of the chromophores, called cytochrome-c-oxidase, which is a key component in producing energy in the cell.
Contact information:
Claire Bowles, claire.bowles @ rbi.co.uk, 44-207-331-2751, New Scientist
