Gene therapy of the human retina levels of light. What follows often is the death of cone cells, responsible for color vision and acuity, at light levels present during the day. Loss of cones leads to full blindness as early as five years old, but may not onset until many years later. There have been multiple hypotheses about how the lack of rod cells can lead to the death of cone cells. Pinpointing a mechanism for RP is difficult because there are more than 39 genetic loci and genes correlated with this disease. In an effort to find the cause of RP, there have been different
Macula of retina shown to prevent the disease. After death or enucleation (removal of the eye) the macula appears yellow, a color that is not visible in the living eye except when viewed with light from which red has been filtered. Structures in the macula are specialized for high-acuity vision. Within the macula are the fovea and foveola that both contain a high density of cones, which are nerve cells that are photoreceptors with high acuity. In details, the normal human eye contains three different types of cones, with different ranges of spectral sensitivity. The brain combines the signals from neighboring cones to