Gene therapy and goggles help some blind patients detect objects

An international clinical study tested an experimental treatment in 10 people with advanced retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited disease that damages the retina’s light-sensing cells.

Researchers injected genetic instructions into each participant’s worse-seeing eye to make surviving retinal cells respond to amber light.

Special goggles used a camera to turn the surrounding scene into amber-light signals for those cells.

Seven participants became more sensitive to light, and six had clinically meaningful improvements; four of the eight who completed behavior tests got better at detecting or locating objects.

The treatment did not restore normal vision: participants could not read or recognize faces, though some could identify a doorway or follow a line while wearing the goggles.

Brain recordings showed signals consistent with visual information reaching the brain, and participants who trained more tended to do better on object tests.

Researchers found the treatment safe within the limits of the trial and say the results provide a basis for developing more sensitive and effective treatments.