March 9, 2015 – Diabetes and Vision Loss

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Anchor lead: Much vision loss due to diabetes can be treated with medications, Elizabeth Tracey reports

If you have diabetes one thing you need to think about is vision loss due to blood vessel damage in the back of the eye.  Now a study led by Neil Bressler, an ophthalmologist at Johns Hopkins, has shown that three medications that are injected into the eye may help, but if damage is moderate or more advanced, one of them is best.

Bressler: The leading cause of vision loss in the working age population is damage to the back part of the eye, the retina tissue, from diabetes.  Vision loss occurs because the diabetes damages the blood vessels in the back of the eye.  The response by the retina is to put out growth factors that cause the retina to swell.  There are three different drugs that you can use to treat this.  The most important thing from this study was we found that all three drugs work very well, but when the vision is moderately impaired, one of the drugs, Eylea, outperforms the other two.  :31

Bressler says that vigilance with regard to eye care can minimize damage to vision related to diabetes.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.