Avastin Helps Untreatable Eye Disease

People with eye cancer treated with radiation who have radiation retinopathy can keep their sight longer if treated with Avastin, say New York researchers.

This is a major breakthrough, said Paul Finger of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary and the lead author of the study. Avastin reduces abnormal blood vessel growth, stops leakage in the eye, and the patients wind up seeing better. This is a first.

Up until now, radiation was the only treatment available for people with inflammation or cancer of the eye’s choroid, retina, orbit, and paranasal sinuses, but it often produced radiation retinopathy, which caused blindness within five years.

Finger and his colleagues have successfully treated 28 patients with Avastin, a drug that stops the formation of abnormal blood vessels by blocking vascular endothelial growth factor.

It is normally used as an anticancer drug and can cause stroke if taken systemically, but Finger’s treatment is local and stays within the eyeball. In an article in the February 2007 issue of the American Journal of Ophthalmology, the team reported that Avastin produced similar good results in patients with radiation optic neuropathy.

A report on the research is published in the June issue of Archives of Ophthalmology.