Retinitis Pigmentosa Jim McLean

Wed, Feb 1st 2017 at 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

R P Fighting Blindness is a charity the club has supported.


Retinitis Pigmentosa is a disease of the eye.
Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) is the name given to a group of inherited conditions of the retina that all lead to a gradual progressive reduction in vision. Difficulties with night vision and peripheral vision are the first things that are noticed. Later, reading vision (detailed vision), colour vision, and central ('straight-ahead') vision are affected.
Cells within the retina called photoreceptors are divided into rods and cones. Rods are in the outer regions of the retina and allow us to see in dim and dark light.  Cones in the central portion of the retina allow us to see fine visual detail and colour. In the early stages of RP, rods are more severely affected than cones. As the rods die, people experience night blindness and a progressive loss of the visual field, the area of space that is visible at a given instant without moving the eyes. The loss of rods eventually leads to a breakdown and loss of cones. In the late stages of RP, as cones die, people tend to lose more of the visual field, developing tunnel vision. They may have difficulty performing essential tasks of daily living such as reading, driving, walking without assistance, or recognizing faces and objects.
There is a lot of RP research being done into various different therapies including gene therapy, stem cell therapy, drug therapy, virus therapy and implants. All these clinical trials take time to assess whether effective and do no long term damage to patients. It is difficult to be patient when we need an effective treatment now.  We were told about high profile fund raising including at the three main marathons – London, Boston and New York.  We were thanked for our money and told it was being well spent and that we would be kept informed of any developments.
 The vote of thanks was given by Richard Basker.
Report by Pearl Clark.                         

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