(Press-News.org) Scientists have identified a group of drugs that may help stop a leading cause of vision loss after making an unexpected discovery that overturns a fundamental belief about DNA.
The drugs, known as Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors, or NRTIs, are commonly used to treat HIV. The new discovery suggests that they may be useful against dry macular degeneration as well, even though a virus does not cause that sight-stealing condition.
A review of four different health insurance databases suggests that people taking these drugs have significantly reduced risk of developing dry macular degeneration, a condition that affects millions of Americans.
"We are extremely excited that the reduced risk was reproduced in all the databases, each with millions of patients," said Jayakrishna Ambati, MD, a top macular degeneration researcher at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. "This finding provides real hope in developing the first treatment for this blinding disease."
Targeting Macular Degeneration
The new discovery comes from Ambati; Fred H. Gage, PhD, of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies; and collaborators around the world. The work rewrites our understanding of DNA, revealing for the first time that it can be manufactured in the cytoplasm of our cells, outside the cell nucleus that is home to our genetic material.
The buildup of a certain type of DNA in the cytoplasm, Alu, contributes to macular degeneration, the researchers found. This buildup appears to kill off an important layer of cells that nourishes the retina's visual cells.
Based on this discovery, the researchers decided to look at drugs that block the production of this DNA, to see if they might help prevent vision loss. They analyzed multiple U.S. health insurance databases - encompassing more than 100 million patients over two decades - and found that people taking NRTIs were almost 40% less likely to develop dry macular degeneration.
The researchers are urging further study to determine if these drugs or safer derivatives known as Kamuvudines, both of which block a key inflammatory pathway, could help prevent vision loss from dry macular degeneration.
"A clinical trial of these inflammasome-inhibiting drugs is now warranted," said Ambati, the founding director of UVA's Center for Advanced Vision Science. "It's also fascinating how uncovering the intricate biology of genetics and combining it with big data archeology can propel insights into new medicines."
Ambati, of UVA's Department of Ophthalmology, previously determined that NRTIs may help prevent diabetes as well.
INFORMATION:
Findings Published
The researchers have published their findings in the scientific journal PNAS. The research team consisted of Shinichi Fukuda, Akhil Varshney, Benjamin J. Fowler, Shao-bin Wang, Siddharth Narendran, Kameshwari Ambati, Tetsuhiro Yasuma, Joseph Magagnoli, Hannah Leung, Shuichiro Hirahara, Yosuke Nagasaka, Reo Yasuma, Ivana Apicella, Felipe Pereira, Ryan D. Makin, Eamonn Magner, Xinan Liu, Jian Sun, Mo Wang, Kirstie Baker, Kenneth M. Marion, Xiwen Huang, Elmira Baghdasaryan, Meenakshi Ambati, Vidya L. Ambati, Akshat Pandey, Lekha Pandya, Tammy Cummings, Daipayan Banerjee, Peirong Huang, Praveen Yerramothu, Genrich V. Tolstonog, Ulrike Held, Jennifer A. Erwin, Apua C.M. Paquola, Joseph R. Herdy, Yuichiro Ogura, Hiroko Terasaki, Tetsuro Oshika, Shaban Darwish, Ramendra K. Singh, Saghar Mozaffari, Deepak Bhattarai, Kyung Bo Kim, James W. Hardin, Charles L. Bennett, David R. Hinton, Timothy E. Hanson, Christian Röver, Keykavous Parang, Nagaraj Kerur, Jinze Liu, Brian C. Werner, S. Scott Sutton, Srinivas R. Sadda, Gerald G. Schumann, Bradley D. Gelfand, Fred H. Gage and Jayakrishna Ambati.
Jayakrishna Ambati is a co-founder of Inflammasome Therapeutics, iVeena Holdings, iVeena Delivery Systems and DiceRx; a full list of the authors' disclosures is included in the paper.
The research was supported by UVA's Strategic Investment Fund, the National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award, the National Institutes of Health's National Eye Institute and many other generous contributors. A full list is included in the paper.
To keep up with the latest medical research news from UVA, subscribe to the Making of Medicine blog at http://makingofmedicine.virginia.edu.
A 15-year experiment on Arctic shrubs in Greenland lends new understanding to an enduring ecological puzzle: How do species with similar needs and life histories occur together at large scales while excluding each other at small scales? The answer to this question has important implications for how climate change might shift species' distributions across the globe.
The study was published today in the journal PNAS and led by the University of California, Davis. Its findings also reveal trends related to carbon sequestration and carbon exchange as the Arctic becomes both greener and browner.
EXPANSION AND EXCLUSION
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A paper by a multidisciplinary team of scientists affiliated with various Brazilian institutions, including the University of São Paulo (USP) and the National Cancer Institute (INCA), shows that people of African descent are less likely to find a donor in the National Register of Voluntary Bone Marrow Donors (REDOME) than people with predominantly European ancestry. The paper is published in Frontiers in Immunology.
REDOME is the world’s third-largest bone marrow bank, with more than 5 million registered voluntary donors.
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Article Title: "Game theory to enhance stock management of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19 outbreak"
Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0246110
INFORMATION: ...
Decoy protein intercepts spike of coronavirus
Virus prevented from infecting human cells
Protein may be new way to treat and prevent COVID-19
CHICAGO --- Northwestern Medicine scientists have developed a new protein that acts as a trickster to neutralize the COVID-19 infection in a human kidney organoid, a miniature organ made from stem cells in the lab.
The protein is a variant of ACE2 (angiotensin converting enzyme-2), the receptor the coronavirus uses to enter and infect human cells. The modified protein intercepts the S spike of the coronavirus and fools it into binding to it rather than the real ACE2 receptor in cell membranes. ...
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The findings could lead to new biomarkers for predicting the onset of these cancers and to a new class of cancer therapies that prevent or correct harmful changes in genome architecture.
The study was published online Feb. 1 in the journal Nature Genetics.
Antibodies are made by immune cells called ...
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The findings, published Feb. 1 in JAMA Neurology, provide compelling evidence that terazosin, and similar medications, might have the potential to prevent or delay the development of Parkinson's disease.
The new study used data on almost 300,000 older men from two large, independent patient datasets--the Truven ...
A new kind of wearable health device would deliver real-time medical data to those with eye or mouth diseases, according to Huanyu 'Larry' Cheng, Dorothy Quiggle Career Development Professor in the Penn State Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics (ESM).
Cheng recently published a paper in Microsystems & Nanoengineering on new micro- and nano-device technology that could revolutionize how certain health conditions are monitored and treated.
"We sought to create a device that collects both small and large substances of biofluids such as tears and saliva, which can be analyzed for certain conditions on a rapid, continuous basis, rather than waiting on test results from samples in a lab," he said.
The sensors would be placed near the tear duct or mouth to collect samples, ...
Winter survival of honey bee colonies is strongly influenced by summer temperatures and precipitation in the prior year, according to Penn State researchers, who said their findings suggest that honey bees have a "goldilocks" preferred range of summer conditions outside of which their probability of surviving the winter falls.
The results of this study, which used several years of survey data provided by the Pennsylvania State Beekeeper's Association and its members, enabled the development of a tool for forecasting honey bee winter survival to support beekeepers' management decisions, the researchers said.
Honey bees contribute more than $20 billion in pollination services to agriculture in the United States and generate another ...
