Elderly eye treatment 'to be made available on NHS'

Healthcare News
28/08/2008
Nice makes decision to provide course of injections on NHS.

A drug which treats the most common cause of progressive blindness in elderly people is set to be made available to patients in England on the NHS, it has emerged.

Lucentis, which treats wet age-related macular degeneration, has been cleared by the UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), while it is already available in Scotland.

It is reported that the body had previously suggested a patient would need to lose the sight in one eye before they could be given the treatment for the other eye.

The new decision has been welcomed by Steve Winyard, head of campaigns at the Royal National Institute for the Blind, who said: "Finally, the torment faced by elderly people forced to either spend their life savings on private treatment or go blind is over."

He added that the move will bring "overwhelming relief" to thousands of people throughout the country.

Meanwhile, Science Daily reports that scientists have made important discoveries in relation to age-related macular degeneration.

It says that research from a team led by Kang Zhang of the University of California, which has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, talks of the discovery of the first gene linked to the "dry" form of the condition.

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