Shanghai scientists yesterday came out with good news for China's 5
million newborns and children suffering from congenital cataract,
declaring they have ferreted out a gene critical to the disease,
which could "make a prenatal check possible, preventing babies from
getting poor eyesight or contracting blindness."
The news of the discovery made by scientists from the Shanghai
Institutes for Biological Sciences of the Chinese Academy of
Sciences - a mutant gene (called heat-shock transcription factor 4
or HSF4) which affects the eye's protein arrangement, causing
congenital cataract - was also published in the U.K.-based Nature
Genetics.
The science magazine hailed it as the first genetic "disease" gene
for cataract detected by Chinese scientists.
Medical experts agreed that in five years time the discovery may
lead to a prenatal check for congenital cataract to find whether
the baby's HSF4 gene mutates.
"As a result of the check, doctors can tell what to expect in the
baby. Later on, other measures, like renovating the mutant gene,
are also possible," said Chu Renyuan, chairman of Shanghai
Ophthalmology Association.
(eastday.com June 25,
2002)