What does infantile hereditary optic atrophy mean?

Question

Hello doctor,

My wife was diagnosed with infantile hereditary optic atrophy when she was young. She is now 52. Can you provide me with some up-to-date information or a webpage that explains the disease, its symptoms, if it goes by any other name or is a symptom of another disease, etc? I can only find some pages so far that are not very clear or shows a copy of an explanation from 45 years back. Has anything changed in the past 35 years or so in regards to the disease that we should be aware of or is it basically still the same issue it was back then?

Answer 1

Hello,

Welcome to icliniq.com.

I am very sorry about your wife, optic atrophy is an irreversible process and once the optic nerve has atrophied, there is nothing we can do. It is regarded as the end stage of the inflammatory process of the optic nerve called optic neuritis, optic neuropathy. Regarding the disease, you can read online about optic neuropathy, hereditary optic neuropathy, this should tell more about how the disease progresses, its inheritance patterns if it spreads to your children and how we can diagnose it early and try to prevent the progression to optic atrophy. Regarding newer advances in treatment, these are confined to optic neuropathy and no treatment currently available has been found to reverse optic atrophy. A few noteworthy and well-acclaimed treatment trails are ONTT-optic neuritis treatment trial and CHAMPS- controlled high-risk Avonex in multiple sclerosis study.