can We Reverse Age-Related Vision Loss?

Changes in vision are ofen a common sign of aging. If you sit in a dimly lit restaurant with someone over 60, you’ll likely hear them say, “Hold on – let me pull out my cell phone.I need more light to read the menu!” But what if we could reverse age-related vision decline?

In a new study, UC Irvine researchers explore a possible therapy for addressing “aging” in the eye and for preventing diseases such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

“We show the potential for reversing age-related vision loss,” says Dorota Skowronska-Krawczyk,PhD,an associate professor in the Department of Physiology and biophysics and the department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences. The study was a collaboration between researchers from UC Irvine, the polish Academy of Sciences, and the Health and Medical University in Potsdam, Germany.

They outline their findings in “Retinal polyunsaturated fatty acid supplementation reverses aging-related vision decline in mice,” a paper published in Science Translational Medicine.

Understanding the “aging” gene

This work follows up on an earlier study on Elongation of Very Long Chain Fatty Acids Protein 2 (ELOVL2), a known biomarker of age. “We showed that vision gets worse when this ELOVL2 enzyme isn’t active,” says Skowronska-Krawczyk, also a faculty member in the Robert M. Brunson Center for Translational Vision Science.