HIV drugs offer hope to prevent blindness

A class of 30-year-old HIV drugs could in future be used to prevent a common cause of incurable blindness, scientists believe.

Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (NRTIs) were originally developed to treat cancer but later harnessed to combat HIV and Aids.

New research shows that they block an inflammatory pathway closely linked to age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a disease that leads to progressive loss of vision.