Gene therapy and special goggles help some blind adults detect objects again - News-Medical

A ten-person trial combined gene therapy with camera-equipped goggles to test an experimental treatment for advanced retinitis pigmentosa. Seven participants gained light sensitivity, while four of eight completing behavioral tests showed consistent improvements across tasks. The small safety-focused study found modest visual gains, with substantial uncertainty about efficacy and no restoration of normal sight. A notebook or small box on a table became easier to detect for some people whose retinal disease had severely damaged their sight. An experimental treatment gave surviving retinal nerve cells a new ability to respond to light. Special goggles supplied the signals those cells needed to convey limited visual information. The ten-person PIONEER trial, reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, primarily assessed safety. Seven participants showed increased light sensitivity after treatment, and four showed consistent gains across several behavioral tests. Improvements varied considerably, and the approach did not restore normal or high-resolution vision. Diagram of the new therapy. ① Gene therapy makes retinal cells light-sensitive.

A study extends an earlier success in one patient to more people with inherited blindness After receiving optogenetic therapy, participants in a new study wore custom goggles to help them detect and locate objects like a notebook.

Among cancer patients, the high financial cost of cancer care is a prevalent problem. This financial burden is also associated with potentially harmful behavioral strategies that patients might use to cope with costs, such as delaying or forgoing treatment and skipping medications. Collectively, researchers refer to this impact as financial toxicity.

Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) could transform diabetes management for millions of Americans with type 2 diabetes who don't take insulin, according to findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The clinical trial found that adults using CGMs spent approximately five additional hours each day within their target blood sugar range compared with those receiving routine care. Nearly twice as many CGM users also achieved an A1c level below 7%, a common treatment goal for people with diabetes.

Patients who wore noise-canceling headphones during minimally invasive gynecological surgery were significantly less likely to experience postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV), suggest findings from a randomized clinical trial presented at the Anesthesiology 2026 annual meeting.

“Beyond Detecting Cancer Recurrence: Can Whole-Genome Sequencing-Based ctDNA Monitoring Help Personalize Adjuvant Treatment? An exciting new study published in The Oncologist highlights the clinical potential of Signatera Genome, a whole-genome sequencing (WGS)-based, tumor-informed circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) assay, not only for detecting molecular residual disease (MRD), but also for potentially informing adjuvant treatment decisions.