失明後眼睛仍能感光 科學家一針重新喚醒視覺訊號 – 自由健康網

Researchers at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in Australia have conducted human trials demonstrating that a light-sensitive drug injection can re-establish visual signals in some patients with severe vision loss.

The study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, suggests that the eyes may retain certain pathways capable of transmitting light signals to the brain even after the primary photoreceptor cells in the retina have been severely damaged.

The clinical trials specifically targeted patients with retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary disease that causes the cells responsible for sensing light to gradually lose their function.

Retinitis pigmentosa typically follows a progressive pattern of vision loss. Patients usually first lose their ability to see at night, followed by a narrowing of their visual field, which can eventually result in severe blindness.

The experimental treatment involves the injection of a light-sensitive drug directly into the eye. This approach aims to restart the transmission of visual signals between the eye and the brain by leveraging the surviving neural pathways that remain after the photoreceptors have degraded.

Following the administration of the drug, the research team found that the brains of some participants with severe visual impairment began to exhibit reactions to light once again.

This development indicates that the biological infrastructure required to send visual information to the brain may persist despite the loss of the cells that initially capture light.