Spain, 13.8% of adults suffer from diabetes, a figure that will increase notoriously in the next twenty years as a result of the increase in levels of obesity and unhealthy lifestyle habits.
One of the possible conditions of diabetics is the deterioration of the retina, in what is known as diabetic retinopathy, which occurs when normal blood vessels in the eye become permeable and fragile, causing bleeding and gradual damage of the retinal damage, which is increasingly sensitive to light and flows into blindness.
The risk of suffering the disease increases exponentially as years are being completed.In this way, after 10 years as a diabetic, the percentage of patients who may suffer retinopathy is between 40%and 50%, and at 20 years he can reach 90%.It is estimated that these patients have 5 times more possibilities of suffering blindness than the rest of the population.
People suffering from diabetes are 5 times more likely to develop blindness than the rest of the population
Aware of this reality, a group of researchers from Johns Hopkins University, in collaboration with Maryland University, has conducted a study from which it follows that when blocking two growth proteins of blood vessels it could bePrevent and treat blindness derived from diabetes .The complete research has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Currently, the laser sealing of the blood vessels of the eye is used to save the central vision, but the truth is that it can also sacrifice the peripheral and nocturnal vision of the sick.Another alternative is the medications capable of blocking the VEGF, that is, the factor that leads to the growth of abnormal blood vessels.However, several studies argue that, although drugs slow down, they do not prevent it.
This was the motivation of the promoters of the study, finding a medication capable of efficiently blocking the factors that affect the ocular deterioration so that, combined with the anti-vegf drugs, proliferative dying retinopathy can be prevented.
