In the main study, involving 716 patients with wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), Lucentis was shown not only to stop the progress of the disease, but to actually reverse its effects of vision loss. After 12 months of treatments, patients treated with Lucentis were able to read an average of seven letters more on an eye chart, while those in the control group were able to read an average of 10.5 fewer letters.
One-year data from the study was presented during the 23rd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Retina Specialists (ASRS) in Montreal, Canada.
“These data are very compelling because, for the first time, we have a potential treatment which has been shown to improve vision in a significant number of patients with wet AMD as opposed to just slowing progression of vision loss,” said Dr Joan Miller, retina specialist at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.
In the early stage Visudyne study, patients treated with a combination of Lucentis and Visudyne, were shown to be able to read an average of 13 more letters on an eye chart than patients treated only with Visudyne.