Retina center teams up with high school student

Fort Myers, FL-Last year Sabrina Prabakaran, a high school student at Canterbury School, met with the Retina Health Center team to discuss a research project to investigate further the value of bevacizumab (Avastin) in the treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The drug is currently approved for the treatment of colon cancer. The research project is now complete, and the findings show that nearly half of patients with AMD and taking bevacizumab showed improvement in vision.

"Longer follow-up will be needed to determine if these results will stay consistent long term, but for now we are very excited about the preliminary findings," said Alexander Eaton, MD, FACS, director, Macular Degeneration Research Center, Retina Health Center. "Avastin has restored vision and in some cases, given people their vision back."

This isn't the first time that Prabakaran has studied medicine. Last fall, as a ninth grader, she was a finalist in the Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge with "Effect of cardiac rehabilitation on patients with coronary artery disease: post-exercise response of blood pressure and heart rate."