Stem cells may aid vision in blind people

Two legally blind women appeared to gain some vision after receiving an experimental treatment using embryonic stem cells, scientists have reported.

Last year, each patient was injected in one eye with cells derived from embryonic stem cells at the University of California, Los Angeles. One patient had the dry form of age-related macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness. The other had a rare disorder known as Stargardt disease that causes serious vision loss. There’s no cure for either eye problem.

After four months, both showed some improvement in reading progressively smaller letters on an eye chart. The Stargardt patient, a graphic artist in Los Angeles, went from seeing no letters at all to being able to read five of the largest letters — via redwolf.newsvine.com