It's a frustrating and frightening thing for millions of people and is the leading cause of blindness in the developed world. In most instances, it comes with age. With a rapidly aging population, and with people living longer, the condition will become a true crisis over the next 20 years and beyond. Which brings us to a group of laboratories scattered around the University of Iowa campus. Patients who come to the huge hospital's eye clinic don't visit these places.
Few people do.
This is where 14 doctors and more than 100 staffers and assistants are trying to find a way to prevent macular degeneration in future generations. It doesn't mean there's a cure. It means these people in Iowa City found a very big piece of the puzzle. So the doctors and their assistants are looking for a way to identify people with a predisposition to macular degeneration. They will study the disease's development in mice, come up with treatments and hopefully, come up with a drug that will prevent macular degeneration.