{"id":3268892,"date":"2025-02-17T12:17:40","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T17:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/?p=3268892"},"modified":"2025-02-19T09:51:58","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T14:51:58","slug":"horses-uveitis-blindness-treatment-3268892","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/horses-uveitis-blindness-treatment-3268892\/","title":{"rendered":"Horse treatment may pave way for blindness fix for humans"},"content":{"rendered":"
A new treatment for vision loss in horses may lead to therapy for a common type of blindness in humans.<\/p>\n
Picture a horse running across an open field, the wind blowing his mane, his hooves stamping into the grassy knoll, eyes on the horizon.<\/p>\n
Now picture that horse’s vision slowly spotting and fading, the horizon blurring, until ultimately, he can’t see anything at all.<\/p>\n
That’s the tragedy that a team of scientists are trying to prevent. One day, their work may even be helpful for people.<\/p>\n
A recent study in Frontiers in Immunology<\/a><\/em>\u00a0looked at the potential of an eye drop they developed to treat the sight-robbing disease known as equine recurrent autoimmune uveitis.<\/p>\n The researchers worked to see if they could restore and protect the vision of horses with this condition.<\/p>\n Uveitis<\/a> is a leading cause of blindness in horses and in humans. It is responsible for about 10% of blindness and visual handicap in the US, which accounts for about 30,000 new cases of blindness each year, according to the Cleveland Clinic.<\/p>\n Uveitis is a serious condition where the uvea, the middle layer of the eye, is inflamed and can cause vision loss in two ways: structures of the eye break down, and light to the retina is blocked. If caught early, medicine can prevent uveitis from causing loss of eyesight, but in more advanced cases, the damage is already done, says Lauren Stewart Stafford, a former microbiology and cell science PhD student at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural 糖心视频s (UF\/IFAS) who is now a post-doc at Case Western Reserve University.<\/p>\n The way uveitis affects eyes\u2014and the way the treatment works\u2014is similar in horses and people, says Joesph Larkin, associate professor in the UF\/IFAS microbiology and cell science department.<\/p>\n