Doctors Say Injecting Gold Into Eyeballs Could Restore Lost Vision

Gold, laser glasses, and camera: It is an unbearable group that can one day be used to restore visibility in people with mesh damage, according to researchers.

in New study Posted in the magazine ACS NanoThe team found that the injection of golden nanoparticles into the eyes of mice with retinal disorders helped stimulate the optical systems of rodents and restore some vision.

When you target infrared laser, the microscopic gold pieces multiply electrical signals similar to those emitted from the cells in the retina necessary for sight, but they were damaged by conditions such as macular degeneration, which is that It affects about 20 million Americans.

“This is a new type of retinal synthesis with the ability to restore the lost vision to the retinal degeneration without the need for any kind of complex surgery or genetic modification,” said lead author Giarwi Ni, a researcher at the University of Brown and National Health Institutes. A statement on work. “We believe that this technique can convert the treatment forms for network degeneration conditions.”

The most common disorder in the retina, age -related macular degeneration, involves damage to cells in the retina called light receptors, causing blurry vision, blind spots, and in advanced stages, the loss of central vision. These light receptors come in the form of “conical” cells responsible for our perception of the color, and “rod” cells that deal with low light conditions. When the light falls on them, the cones and bars start from the small electrical impulses that are sent to the two -electrode and node cells, which treat the signals before they abandon the brain. If the light receptors are damaged, the entire visual chain is cut off.

But the golden nanoparticles – specifically, the plasmary gold nanorod – can be replaced effectively. In mice experiments, the researchers found that the concentration of infrared light on mineral molecules generates heat that stimulated the cells of the pole and the node, just like light receptors. This has led to an increase in activity in the optical cortical of MICES, which indicates that visual signals were in fact receiving and that their vision was partially restored. So far, the team has not noticed any side effects of the approach.

“We have shown that the nanoparticles can stay in the eye networks for several months without any large toxicity,” Ni said.

It was applied to humans, a pair of infrared red radiology glasses that encrypt the image data collected from a camera on the plane in the golden nanoparticles, and Eureka – you have visual signals that are sent to the brain. A similar approach has been proposed a few years ago, as the team notes, but decisively, this methodology does not require surgery, but rather a relatively simple injection (and a piece of very advanced head covers).

NIE believes that the approach also has other advantages, such as high -resolution allowing a full vision field. Nevertheless, there is still an important research that must be done before it is tried in a clinical environment on humans.

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