Age-related macular degeneration (AMD), is a common cause of vision loss and often affects older people.
The disease is caused by an inappropriate growth of blood vessels around the retina and when these immature blood vessels leak and ooze, they damage cells in the retina and affect vision.
Current treatments using lasers and photodynamic therapy had been able to slow down the progression of the disease but patients ultimately still lose their vision.
Now a new drug has been found to slow down and even improve sight in some patients.
Lucentis (ranibizumab) used to treat wet age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD), which affects thousands of people in the UK alone, slowed vision loss in around nine out of 10 patients, and improved vision for about a third.
The drug has already been approved for use in the U.S. but has yet to be granted a European licence and still has to be appraised by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).
Ranibizumab is one of a class of drugs known as anti-angiogenics and prevents the formation of abnormal, new blood vessels in the eye, and dries up vessels which have already begun to leak.
The 716 patients who took part in the study were given eye chart tests before and after receiving the drug, or a placebo and it was found after two years patients taking 0.3mg of Lucentis were able to read on average 5.4 more letters on the sight chart while those taking the placebo drug were able to read 14.9 fewer letters.
A quarter (26%) of those receiving 0.3mg of the drug and 33% of those receiving 0.5mg also experienced improvements in their sight, compared with 4% on the placebo.
This meant they could read an additional three lines or 15 or more letters on an eye chart after a course of treatments.