Results from Research in Victoria, Australia Give New Hope to People Suffering from Diseases that Are Major Causes of Blindness

A drug developed by Melbourne-based biotech company, Antisense Therapeutics, has shown animal studies that it decreases levels of a hormone associated with diabetic retinopathy and wet age-related macular degeneration - two diseases that affect the eyesight of millions of people, and which currently have no effective drug treatments. The results from animal testing also confirmed the drug's potential as a treatment for acromegaly, a growth hormone disorder Antisense Therapeutics will be presenting on these results, and other key aspects of its business at the Business Forum at BIO2004, the world's biggest biotech conference, San Francisco June 6-9.

With an aging population and increasing prevalence of diabetes Australia can expect a surge in the incidence of blindness. Two of the major causes of blindness are diabetic retinopathy and wet-age related macular degeneration.

Of the estimated 940,000 Australians (around 1 in 13) who have diabetes all are at risk of vision loss or blindness and ten per cent will develop a vision threatening condition. More than 18 million people in the US have diabetes and each year about 12-24,000 Americans lose their sight because of diabetes retinopathy. Patients with Type I diabetes who have had their disease for more than ten years have a 90 per cent chance of developing retinopathy, and about 20 per cent of patients with Type II diabetes will get the disease. Wet age-related macular degeneration affects between 1.2 million and 1.65 million Americans.

Read the whole article at Yahoo News: New Drug Offers Hope for People With Two of the Most Common and Debilitating Eye Diseases