|
|
Article: "Popeye" cure for blindness discovered.
- Article from:
- Health & Medicine Week
- Article date:
- May 17, 2004
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 NewsRX. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
2004 MAY 17 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A truly extraordinary cure for some forms of blindness is being proposed. The idea is to add light-absorbing pigments from spinach to nerve cells in the retina to make the nerve cells fire when struck by light.
Eli Greenbaum's team at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee has been exploring this possibility for several years. In their latest experiments, the researchers have shown that adding plant pigments to human cells makes the cells respond to light. The technique would restore only limited vision at best - people would be color-blind, for instance - but Greenbaum thinks it could provide far better ...