Blind mice; see how they run

I cannot imagine what it must be like to be blind, especially if you have been able to see in the past. The reasons why people go blind differs from person to person and each of these causes will, most likely, require a different treatment. Scientists and doctors have been working at the Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfield's Eye Hospital to discover these potential treatments for blindness, especially degenerative blindness which is where one's eyesight progressively becomes worse until the person is blind.

Recently, these very scientists have taken mice with nyctalopia (night blindness) and transplanted cells into their retina. In the retina there are two types of light sensitive cells, rods and cones. Cones are used to detect colour and are found mostly in the fovea (yellow spot). Rods are the cells which detect light, and these are the cells which are important for vision in darkness. The most common cause of nyctalopia is when the rod cells cease to work, and this can be for a number of reasons thus it is easier to simply replace the rod cells.

For these mice, scientists have extracted immature rod cells from healthy mice and inserted them into the retina of the blind mice. The mice and then allowed to rest for six weeks, and the results show that one in six of the newly implanted rod cells grew nerves connecting them to the mices' retinas. Therefore, when the mice where placed in a maze with dim lighting they were now able to complete it meaning these scientists have been able to give these mice the sense of vision.

The results look promising but I am not sure how well it will work in humans. We do not know the quality of vision for these mice. I do not think that they will allow this sort of treatment to happen in humans if they are not able to see clearly. However, last year Moorfield's Eye Hospital were given permission to start researching and growing human stem cells in order to research new possibilities of treatments. I still think that eye transplants or some sort of bionic eye (such as a camera attached to the brain) will be a more realsitic treatment option in the future.