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Oct. 4, 2006 -- Lucentis, a newly approved drug for age-related macular degeneration, not only prevents blindness but actually improves many patients' vision.
Macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in people aged 50 and older. The major finding comes from two clinical trials reported in the Oct. 5 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
David M. Brown, MD, a retina surgeon at Houston's Methodist Hospital, was a researcher for one study. Philip J. Rosenfeld MD, PhD, of the University of Miami's Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, was a researcher for the other.
"It is truly better than our greatest expectations," Brown tells WebMD. "The biggest advance from both trials is they are the first ever to show significant improvement in vision."
"This is not a cure," Rosenfeld tells WebMD. "If macular degeneration patients have lost vision for a year or longer, this is not going to restore their vision. But for the right patients, at the right point in their disease, these drugs are extremely beneficial."
Lucentis is expensive. The wholesale cost is $2,000 a dose. But Brown says there are different ways to look at this cost.
"I have a patient, a farmer with one eye, who was 96 when he started the study and is 99 now -- still driving his tractor and still taking care of his cows," Brown says. "They talk about the cost of this drug. But the cost of not being able to drive and losing your job and being put in assisted living -- that is the true cost."