Greetings from what appears to be Pennsylvania’s version of monsoon season. Good grief. Tis wet out there!
This is going to be yet another hodge podge of unrelated ‘stuff’. Bear with me if you can.
First of all, I want to thank all of the kind people in the world and encourage you, if you are not going out because of fear of the stigma of vision loss or whatever, to get out there. Remember I told you I got left the other week? Strangers at the Y who saw that debacle are now checking on me. Do I have a ride? Be sure to say something if I get stuck again.
The clerk at a chain, sandwich restaurant gave me my change in $1s when I said I was visually impaired and needed singles for the van. 18 of them. Bless him.
Then there are my high school friends who drove 80 miles to have lunch and ‘catch up’ and the woman at Zumba who volunteered to give me a ride to Mom Prom and a dozen other people who look out for me and drive my sorry self around. Thank you!
Really. The more you get out there the better life will be. People are basically good and helpful. They will look out for you.
And in other news, I got lifetime dog licenses for the puppygirls. They offer a cut rate to the elderly and/or disabled. It should be about half of what I would have paid if I had bought licenses for the next 13 years. Saving money is a good thing. If you have younger dogs check it out.
NFB Newsline is expanding their offerings. They are now offering a children’s magazine, Stone Soup, as well as Sports Illustrated Online. These are in addition to Sporting News, Globe’s Israel and Science X, not to forget Medical Xpress and the newspaper Concord Monitor.
Remember Newsline comes to you through your phone, including landlines for people who don’t like their electronics to be ‘smart’. They offer a wide variety of local newspapers and you just may find some local news to listen to with your morning cup of coffee.
What else? Well, I found a healio.com article that talked about using immunosuppressants more frequently in Ophthalmology. This April 14, 2018 article did not mention AMD as a target condition, but given that AMD is thought to be related to immune system problems, they may want to look at the utility of immunosuppressants sometime down the line. My point in mentioning it was to show research in Ophthalmology is branching out in many different ways.
And case in point, remember the gene therapy for Leber congenital amaurosis that was developed in Philly and approved by the FDA? The really expensive one, Luxterna? The doctors at Bascom Palmer just injected Luxterna into the eye of a nine year old. His family is starting to see improved functional vision in this child. [Lin/Linda: actually, this March 23rd article says that there were 2 boys who were injected with Luxterna.]
And one more before I go: retinitis pigmentosa is a retina degeneration disease that leads eventually to total blindness. GenSight has gotten MHPRA approval to run clinical trials of gene therapy for RP in the UK. (Alphabet soup, anyone??) Why get excited about that in an AMD blog? To quote the GenSight CEO “If proven safe and effective, this therapy could be transferable from retinitis pigmentosa to dry AMD.” [MHPRA stands for Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency and is the UK’s equivalent to the US’s FDA.]
Oh! That’s a good reason! Things are looking brighter every day!