Reuters reports that a team of British doctors has carried out the world's first eye operations using gene therapy. The group from Moorfields Eye Hospital and University College London (UCL) has operated on a small number of young adults with Leber's congenital amaurosis, a type of inherited childhood blindness caused by a single abnormal gene. The condition prevents the retina from detecting light properly, resulting in progressive deterioration and severely impaired eyesight. There is currently no effective treatment. The new experimental procedure involves inserting normal copies of the faulty RPE65 gene into cells of the retina - the light-sensitive layer of cells at the back of the eye - using a harmless virus or vector. It will be several months before the success of the procedure can be properly assessed but medics said there had been no complications so far. Some gene therapy approaches have helped patients. But one 18-year-old volunteer died in a gene therapy experiment in 1999 and two French boys cured of a rare immune disease later developed leukaemia.
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