Al-Ahram newspaper highlights the success of Ain Shams University

In its paper issue dated May 3, 2023, Al-Ahram newspaper highlighted the success of Ain Shams University, writing in one of its pages a report entitled "For the first time in Egypt and Africa, the success of gene therapy for a child suffering from hereditary retinal atrophy."

According to the report, an Egyptian medical team was able to apply the first genetic treatment nearby, and this new treatment is a medical breakthrough that will save a child with hereditary retinal atrophy.

Dr. Fathi Fawzy, Professor of Ophthalmology and Surgery, considered the operation as the latest therapeutic technique reached by scientists and was successfully performed in Egypt a few weeks ago, where a 9-year-old child was injected with gene therapy for a compound that was injected under the retina's visual center.

He added that discoloration retinal atrophy or “night blindness” is a genetic disease and is one of the diseases spread in Egypt due to consanguineous marriage, as the person suffering from it suffers from severe vision impairment at night or in places with low light, and the matter may develop and the patient loses his sight, and medicine was standing Unable to treat some of these cases until recently.

This new treatment is a scientific breakthrough that will save millions of patients around the world from the specter of blindness.

Dr. Muhammed Moghazi Mahgoub, professor of ophthalmology at Ain Shams University and head of the medical team that performed the injection, said that the child who underwent the injection had been suffering for years from severe visual impairment due to a defect in one of the genes affecting the enzymes of the retina.

The surface of the eye has been injected with gene therapy, which works to compensate the retina due to the genetic defect, which enables the patient to see better.

He said that the case of this child is the first in Egypt and Africa to obtain a genetic treatment for a genetic eye disease.