Alzheimer drugs may help save sight

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Scientists have shown for the first time that proteins involved in Alzheimer's disease are also implicated in glaucoma.

The discovery holds out the hope of using drugs that target the proteins to treat the eye disorder, the biggest cause of irreversible blindness worldwide.

A pilot patient trial is planned at the end of this year or the start of 2008.

Glaucoma results in damage to the root of the optic nerve where it leaves the eye.

As the retinal nerve cells carrying messages to the brain are destroyed, sight is lost, eventually resulting in blindness.

In the UK, 2% of the population over the age of 40 suffer from varying degrees of glaucoma, a total of more than 500,000 people. Worldwide, as many as 65 million people may be affected.

Diabetics are at increased risk of the disease, as are people of Afro-Carribean descent. Anyone who has a close blood relative with glaucoma is four times more likely than average to develop the condition.

Little is known about the precise causes of glaucoma. It is associated with increased pressure in the eye, but up to a third of patients continue to lose vision even when this is well controlled. Up to 30% of these difficult to treat patients will go blind.

The new research led by scientists at University College London shows that a brain protein associated with Alzheimer's also causes glaucoma-type damage to optical nerves.