UVA researchers are investigating whether common HIV drugs and other medications can help treat geographic atrophy, an often misunderstood form of dry age-related macular degeneration. Learn more about their research and what their findings can mean.

What Is Geographic Atrophy?

Geographic atrophy (GA) is an advanced form of dry age-related macular degeneration. It occurs when certain regions of the retinal cells waste away and die. This regional erosion results in blind spots in the visual field, is untreatable, and can eventually lead to blindness. Patients with GA in one eye are more likely to develop the condition in both. Symptoms often include the inability to see all words when reading or whole faces when looking at other people. GA generally develops gradually over several years and does not normally impact peripheral vision. 

What Did The Researchers Find?

Scientists at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville discovered that harmful DNA known as Alu cDNA, which originates in the cytoplasm, is directly responsible for the destruction of retinal cells, a revelation that can offer valuable insights as to how GA advances. “Although we’ve known that geographic atrophy expands over time, we didn’t know how or why,” said Dr. Jayakrishna Ambati of UVA’s Department of Ophthalmology and Center for Advanced Vision Science. “Our finding in human eyes that the levels of toxic Alu cDNA are highest at the leading edge of the geographic atrophy lesion provides strong evidence that it is responsible for this expansion over time that leads to vision loss.”

What Do the Findings Mean?

The identification of the relationship between Alu cDNA and GA has prompted Ambati and his collaborators to call for the exploration of other means of treatment of the condition, specifically certain types of HIV drugs called nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors or NRTIs, which could block the inflammation and protect cells of the retina. 

He and his team found that NRTIs, as well as their safer derivatives called Kamuvudines, proved beneficial in lab mice. Additionally, a comprehensive review of four different health insurance databases found that people taking these drugs were almost 40 percent less likely to develop dry macular degeneration. 

“Over the last two decades, dozens of clinical trials for geographic atrophy that have targeted other pathways have failed,” Ambati said. “These findings from patient eyes provide a strong impetus for a new direction.”

CBS News Staff. (2021, September. 30). Researchers find Potential Way to Treat Macular Degeneration