Lin will be thrilled. After the holiday I am going to work four days a week! No more multiple pages per day![Lin/Linda: You’re going to give these nice people the idea that I don’t LIKE to do your pages! ::grin::]
I have to say I have been easing off on my resolution to spend my ‘retirement’ doing domestic chores. The basement sort of broke my will. Tomorrow we take a load to the dump. Maybe after I get rid of all that, I will be motivated to start again.
In the meantime, there are all sorts of things happening in the world of AMD! Hurrah! Saved again from domestic drudgery!?
Healio ran a little piece saying the EU has granted the Lumithera LT-300 a “CE mark for treating dry AMD.”
Ok. I am clueless.
According to Wellkang Tech Consulting the CE mark – generally made with rounded letters – stands for the French for European Certified. (And no, I am not attempting the French. I was allowed to skip my last reading in my senior year. My accent was so bad, he did not want to listen to me!) It appears this means it satisfies “essential requirements” for a product to be sold in the EU.
Now, supposedly this thing is to offer “a safe and effective early-stage intervention for patients with early-stage AMD.” That makes it sound like it is shelf ready. Coming to a Walmart near you sort of thing. What the hey is it then????
The Healio article says it uses “photobiomodulation which involves noninvasive light-emitting diodes for the treatment of ocular disease.” Wonderful. I love sentences that tell me nothing or at least very little. Good thing I am a helleva researcher even if I say so myself.?
I followed a link to a 2016 Healio article talking about the LT-300 in clinical trials. Get to that in a sec’. Photobiomodulation is first.
Photobiomodulation, according to the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery, is a term used to describe the mechanistic/scientific basis for this photonic specialty and photobiomodulation therapy is the term for its therapeutic application. Yeah. The mud thickens.
Moving on, it looks like the category includes lasers, LED lights, and any form of non-ionising light. It appears light energy is being used to alter cells at the molecular level.
What I am looking at here is crossing my eyes, but my ignorant, social scientist guess on this is they are using light to alter cell functioning and, among possibly other things, reduce inflammation. The articles I was scanning mentioned red light several times. My mind immediately went to how blue light is bad for us, and how red light is at the other end of the spectrum. ROY G BIV, remember? [ROY G BIV = Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet]
Here is the disclaimer: I do not know what I am talking about here. That last paragraph was all ignorant supposition based on few facts. I don’t know. If you know something about this, speak up! I could use the help. I said I am a good researcher, not that I understand what I find.?
The 2016 Healio article, photobiomodulation improves visual acuity…suggested the red, yellow and infrared lights used in the study improved visual acuity and contrast sensitivity and – drum roll, please – shrank drusen. They appear to be planning its use with early stage AMD. The idea is to slow the roll to advanced forms of the disease.
There you go. Readers in the EU, go and find out about this thing. This might just be the first treatment for dry AMD. Wow.
Written June 26th, 2018