Cancer Drug 'Could Treat Blindness'

A less expensive anti-cancer drug has been found to be as effective as an expensive drug in treating the most common cause of blindness in older adults.

The results of the two-year trial, which was led by Queen's scientist Professor Usha Chakravarthy and published in The Lancet, show that two drug treatments - Lucentis and Avastin - are equally effective in treating neovascular or wet age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD).

Wet AMD is a common cause of sight loss in older people and at least 23,000 are diagnosed with the condition each year in the UK. Without treatment, two thirds of those with the condition will experience severe loss of sight within two years of being diagnosed.

Lucentis, the drug most commonly used in the UK at present to treat wet AMD, costs about £700 per injection, while Avastin costs about £60 per injection.

It has now been claimed that the NHS could save £84.5m annually based on injecting 17,295 eyes each year if they made the switch. Avastin is already used to treat wet AMD in some parts of the UK and extensively elsewhere in the world and also for other eye conditions.

Over the past five years, a team of scientists and eye specialists from 23 hospitals and UK universities, including Queen's University Belfast, University of Bristol, University of Liverpool, University of Southampton and University of Oxford, have investigated whether Lucentis and Avastin and the way they are given are equally effective and safe.

Six hundred and ten people with wet AMD entered a two-year trial known as IVAN which was one of the largest ever carried out in the field of eye disease in the UK.

Professor Chakravarthy said: "The IVAN results at the end of year two show that Lucentis and Avastin have similar functional effectiveness regardless of the drug received. With respect to monthly versus as needed treatment, while there was marginally better eyesight in the former, the development of atrophy is a matter of concern in the longer term."

(JP/CD)