AN Oxford woman has become the first in the world to undergo an operation which could prevent the UK's most common cause of blindness.

Janet Osborne suffers from age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which naitonally affects more than 600,000 people.

It impacts the central part of a patient’s vision with gaps or ‘smudges’, making everyday activities like reading and recognising faces difficult.

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The 80-year-old, who has the condition in both eyes, said that her restricted vision made household tasks like preparing vegetables and sewing difficult and often finds it hard to recognise faces. 

A pioneering gene therapy operation to try to prevent furth sight loss was carried out at the John Radcliffe Hospital by Robert MacLaren, Professor of Ophthalmology at Oxford University.

Prof MacLaren said: “AMD is the number one cause of untreatable blindness in the developed world.

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"A genetic treatment administered early on to preserve the vision in patients who would otherwise lose their sight would be a tremendous breakthrough and certainly something I hope to see in the near future.”

The operation was part of the FOCUS trial, sponsored by Gyroscope Therapeutics, a UK biotech company developing gene therapy products for ocular diseases such as dry AMD.

The procedure, a world first, involved detaching the retina and injecting a solution containing a virus underneath.

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The virus contains a modified DNA sequence, which infects cells, called the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), and corrects a genetic defect that causes AMD.

If successful, gene therapy would only need to be performed once, as the effects are thought to be long-lasting.

The aim of the therapy is to halt the progress of the condition and preserve what vision patients have remaining.

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It is hoped that gene therapy could be used in the future on patients with early AMD and so halt the disease before their vision has started to deteriorate.

Mrs Osborne said she was motivated to take part in the trial to help others, saying: “I wasn’t thinking of me. I was thinking of other people.

"For me, I hope my sight doesn’t get any worse. That would be fantastic. It means I wouldn’t be such a nuisance to my family.”