Monday, April 22, 2013

Stargardt's Disease

                                                                         Right Eye

                                                                         Left Eye

What is it? It's an inherited form of juvenile macular degeneration that causes progressive vision loss usually leading to legal blindness. People with Stargardt's disease will have wavy vision, blind spots, blurriness, impaired colored vision and difficulty adapting to dim lighting.

What's going on in the picture? Its a funds autofluorescence image of the effects of Stargardt's disease.  The dark areas (hypo-autofluorescence) have already died off causing loss of vision in those areas.  The bright white areas (hyper-autofluorescence) will die off overtime.  The bright spots come from a build up lipofuscin which causes the cells to be overstressed.  Since the cells can't handle it, they will eventually die off and turn dark.  Unfortunately there is no treatment for Stargardt's disease.

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