Researchers from University of California - Irvine are currently working on a new approach that will help correct childhood visual disorders.
Though cataracts and amblyopia (lazy eye) are often associated with older people, there are some children who suffer from these disorders very early in life. Researchers from the University of California - Irvine are now looking at ways to rectify this. By studying and analyzing the role of neurons that are an important part of vision development, researchers have found a new approach to remedy this childhood disorder.
In older people with cataracts, surgery can restore normal vision. However, early cataracts and lazy eye can cause permanent vision defects in youngsters even after surgery and can also lead to impaired brain development.
During the study, Xiangmin Xu, assistant professor of anatomy & neurobiology at UC Irvine, and Josh Trachtenberg, associate professor of neurobiology at UCLA, found that early cataracts and lazy eye are caused because of a specific class of inhibitory neurons that control the time window, or "critical period," in early vision development, generally before age 7.
When these key neurons fail to function properly during the critical period of visual development, it leads to visual disorders in children. For the study, researchers used certain drugs on mice to re-open this critical vision developing period and treat the neurons that were not functioning properly.
"The specific type of neurons that mediate the critical-period window during childhood development have not been well understood until now," Xu said in a press release. "Our breakthrough outlines a new path for treatments that can restore normal vision in children who have had early vision disorders."
According to a Cleveland Clinic report, an estimated 250 children develop a cataract either prior to birth or during childhood. Though the exact reason for early cataract has not been determined, researchers speculate that it could be hereditary or caused by a number of genetic disorders.
