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Senior Citizen Health & Medicine
Lucentis Therapy for Wet Age-Related Macular
Degeneration Shows Significant Vision Gain
'Lucentis is most
significant advance in treating AMD in history'
 October 10, 2006 -More than one-third of patients
treated with Lucentis for wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD)
showed "unprecedented improvements" in vision, according to findings
published in the New England Journal of Medicine. AMD is a major cause
of central visual loss and is the leading cause of blindness in senior
citizens.
Dr. David M. Brown, retinal surgeon with
Vitreoretinal Consultants at The Methodist Hospital in Houston, is lead
author on the ANCHOR study and a secondary author on the MARINA study.
Brown enrolled more patients than any other site worldwide in the
studies, which contributed to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s
June approval of Lucentis for the treatment of patients with wet AMD.
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FDA Approves Lucentis for Treatment of Wet
Age-Related Macular Degeneration
Monthly dose can maintain the vision of more than
90% of patients
July 2, 2006 - The Food and Drug Administration has
approved Lucentis (ranibizumab injection) for the treatment of patients
with neovascular (wet) age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the
leading cause of blindness in senior citizens. Lucentis is the first
treatment which, when dosed monthly by injection, can maintain the vision of more
than 90 percent of patients with this type of AMD.
Read more...
Genetic Variation May Be Factor in Half of
Age-Related Macular Degeneration
AMD is the most important cause of irreversible
visual loss in the elderly
July 19, 2006 – Age-related macular degeneration
(AMD) is high on the radar of senior citizens concerned about their
vision. It is the most common cause of vision loss in the elderly.
Researchers now say that up to 50 percent of AMD cases may be caused by
a certain genetic variation, which along with inflammatory factors and
smoking, significantly increases the risk.
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Vision Loss Risk Factors for Senior Citizens: fish
good, tobacco bad, hormone therapy neutral
Three articles in
JAMA look at Age-Related Macular Degeneration Risks
 July 10, 2006 - Eating fish frequently may be
associated with decreased chances of developing age-related macular
degeneration, while smoking nearly doubles the risk for this common
cause of vision loss and hormone therapy appears to have no effect,
according to three articles in the July issue of the Archives of
Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. All three studies
involved senior citizens, since AMD is the leading cause of blindness in
older people. Read
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on
Health & Medicine |
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“Lucentis therapy is the most significant advance
in the treatment of macular degeneration in the history of the disease,”
said Brown.
“The ANCHOR study compared the previous treatment
for macular degeneration (photodynamic therapy) with Lucentis in the
most aggressive form of the disease.
While 60 percent of the eyes treated with
photodynamic therapy were legally blind at the end of the first year of
study, patients who received Lucentis treatment were able to avoid legal
blindness in seven out of eight cases.
Seven percent of the Lucentis-treated patients
improved to 20/20 vision at the one year endpoint. It truly made a
remarkable difference in many of these patient’s lives enabling them to
maintain driving and keep their independence.”
Data from the two randomized, controlled pivotal
Phase III clinical trials of Lucentis (ranibizumab injection) shows that
at one year, 95 percent of patients treated with Lucentis did not lose
vision.
Of these patients, 55 percent maintained their
vision (defined as a loss of less than 15 letters in visual acuity) and
up to 40 percent experienced an improvement of three lines (15 letters)
or more on the study eye chart. In the MARINA study, patients were
randomized to receive Lucentis injections once a month for two years.
Patients in the ANCHOR study were randomized to
either receive Lucentis injections once a month or photodynamic therapy
every three months for two years.
Lucentis is designed to block new blood vessel
growth and leakiness, which lead to wet AMD, by binding to and
inhibiting VEGF-A, a protein that is believed to play a critical role in
the formation of new blood vessels.
Wet AMD affects the macula, the portion of the eye
responsible for the central vision required for everyday activities such
as reading, driving and recognizing faces. Symptoms include blurred,
gray or blank spots in the center of the visual field and distortion
that makes edges or lines appear wavy.
The National Eye Institute estimates that there are
1.7 million people with the advanced form of AMD in the United States
and that this prevalence will grow to 2.95 million by 2020.
AMD occurs in two forms: dry and wet. While all
cases begin as the dry form, wet AMD accounts for about 85 percent of
all AMD-related blindness and can result in sudden and severe vision
loss. The dry form is associated with atrophic cell death of the central
retina or macula. The wet form is caused by growth of abnormal blood
vessels that leak fluid and blood under the macula causing scar tissue
that destroys the central retina.
About The Methodist Hospital
The Methodist Hospital in Houston is one of the
nation’s largest private, non-profit general hospitals. Dedicated to
providing the highest level of patient care, Methodist has a 90 year
legacy of medical breakthroughs, such as the world’s first
multiple-organ transplant in the 1960s, gene therapy for prostate
cancer, and the first islet cell transplants in Texas.
Methodist is ranked among the country’s top
centers in six specialties in U.S News & World Report’s 2006 America’s
Best Hospitals issue. The hospital ranked in more specialties than any
other hospital in Houston. Methodist also was named by FORTUNE as one of
the “100 Best Companies to Work For” in 2006.
Methodist is primarily affiliated with Weill
Medical College of Cornell University and New York Presbyterian
Hospital, two of the nation’s leading centers for patient care, medical
education and research. Methodist also is affiliated with the University
of Houston. For more information, call (713) 790-3333 or visit
http://www.methodisthealth.com.
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