Philadelphia Front Page News TV-Radio News In Brief: A cure for horse blindness could let humans see again too Forward news by KYW Newsradio frontpagenews1@yahoo.com
Research in horses may eventually lead to a treatment for people who develop blindness as a result of the autoimmune disease recurrent uveitis, according to a study recently published in the Frontiers in Immunology journal.
According to the study authors, recurrent uveitis (RU) is “a leading cause of ocular detriment” in both humans and horses. In Equine Ophthalmology by Ann E. Dwyer, she notes that data suggests at least 1% of horses lose sight in one or both eyes during their lifetime. A 2012 study published in the Ophthalmology journal said uveitis was estimated to cause 30,000 new cases of legal blindness in humans annually in the U.S.
“Equine and human RU share many similarities including spontaneous disease and aberrant cytokine signaling,” said authors of the recent study. Cytokines are a type of protein made by certain immune and non-immune cells and they effect on the immune system.
SOCS1 is “a critical regulator of cytokine signaling,” per the study authors, and reduced levels of it are associated with multiple autoimmune diseases. In the past, topical administration of SOCS1-KIR, a substance that mimics SOCS1, was linked with reduced ocular issues in horses with RU.
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