Neuroscience researcher, Dr. Adriana Di Polo, Ph. D., and her team at the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM) in Canada, have made a major breakthrough in the treatment of glaucoma. Their findings could also be applicable to other neurodegenerative conditions, notably Alzheimer’s disease. The results have just been published in the prestigious British scientific journal Brain, an Oxford University Press publication.
Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide, affecting over 60 million people in the world. Increased ocular pressure is a major risk factor in the development of glaucoma. At the outset, people with glaucoma are unaware that they are affected because the disease does not cause vision problems during the early stages. However, ocular hypertension causes fast shrinkage of the dendrites, the fine and long projections that carry neural information from synapses to cell bodies, impairing retinal function.