BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM
Age-related macular degeneration eliminates the center of your vision – the ability to read, to recognize faces, to see what’s right in front of you. For the more than five million people worldwide living with its most advanced form, geographic atrophy, that loss has always been permanent. A new clinical trial suggests that this may no longer have to be true.
A wireless retinal implant smaller than a thumbnail has restored meaningful central vision in 81 percent of patients who received it, and 84 percent reported being able to read numbers or words at home within a year. Some read pages in a book.
What the trial found
The international PRIMAvera trial followed 38 patients aged 60 and older across 17 medical centers in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. After 12 months, participants had gained an average of 25 letters on a standard eye chart, roughly five lines of improvement. One patient gained 59 letters, or 12 full lines.
“More than 80 percent of the patients were able to read letters and words, and some reading pages in a book,” said Dr. José-Alain Sahel, director of the UPMC Vision Institute and senior author of the study.
How the PRIMA system works
The implant is 2mm and replaces damaged photoreceptors in the retina. A camera built into a pair of specialized glasses captures images and transmits them via near-infrared light to the implant, which converts that signal into electrical pulses that stimulate the retina’s surviving cells. Users can adjust zoom and contrast settings themselves, making it adaptable for different tasks like reading a label, recognizing a face, or navigating a room.
The system was developed by Science Corporation, and the trial was co-led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, Stanford University, and the University of Bonn.
Why this matters
Geographic atrophy is the leading cause of permanent blindness in older adults. Unlike earlier stages of AMD, there is no approved treatment that restores vision once it’s gone. The PRIMAvera results are from the largest clinical trial of a photovoltaic retinal prosthesis ever conducted, and all procedure-related side effects had fully resolved by the 12-month mark. That safety profile matters as much as the efficacy numbers when making the case to regulators.
What’s next
Science Corporation has submitted approval applications in both Europe and the United States, with UPMC having performed the first U.S. implantation of the PRIMA device back in 2020. Regulatory timelines vary, but the PRIMAvera results give the research team a strong case. For people with geographic atrophy, the current standard of care offers ways to slow vision loss but nothing to reverse it. A treatment that can actually do that would be genuinely new.
Source study: New England Journal of Medicine– Subretinal photovoltaic implant to restore vision in geographic atrophy due to AMD
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