With premature birth rates rising steadily since 1981, even after all the medical advances in fetal and neonatal care, the medical fraternity are getting concerned in the rising number of serious and multiple health problems – like cerebral palsy, mental retardation and blindness – followed by their less developed organs.
One of such serious problems of soaring numbers of premature birth-defects is an alarming increase in eyesight problems in babies born before their eyes are finished growing.
But, recently, researchers at the University of Florida and Harvard Medical School have found a promising answer to this increasing premature birth defect – it’s a protein in body, generally thought to be just one of the body’s supporting players.
Maria B. Grant, M.D., a professor of pharmacology and therapeutics at UF’s College of Medicine said,
We’ve identified a protein that is part of the body’s natural defenses in oxygen-deprived conditions. When babies are born before levels of this protein are normal, blood vessels spread abnormally throughout the retina.
But if we can increase the protein to more normal levels in premature babies, it should result in healthier blood vessel growth.
Until this discovery, the protein — IGFBP-3 — was thought to exist exclusively for regulating insulin-like growth factor-1. But, this discovery has found that it activate stem cells and other reparative cells of the bone marrow and the lining of blood vessels.
Providing, perhaps, a new therapy for prematurity-retinopathy, it can potentially and considerably cut down blinding disease, which affects about 15,000 babies each year.
So, it’s a relief and a cure for the prematurely born babies, who can, with the help of the protein, cope with their life’s first phases without becoming blind. Thanks to the newly discovered function of the protein.
