As many of you know, I was due to run the London Marathon on 26th April. Its postponement until 4th October was sadly inevitable due to Covid-19 but this could also have a potentially have a devastating impact on charities. Fortunately, the London Marathon have organised the 2.6 Challenge to help raise money for charities like Fight for Sight. Over the weekend of 25th and 26th April I will be running 26 km instead!

I’ve seen first-hand the life-changing eye research Fight for Sight are supporting and the amazing impact it can have for people living with a sight loss condition

As many of you know, I have a genetic eye condition called choroideremia. It is a condition caused by an irregularity in the X chromosome. It only affects men – my brother Matt and cousin Nick also both live with choroideremia, as did our late Grandad. However, the condition is actually very rare and on average affects 1 in 50,000 men. Choroideremia causes a gradual deterioration of the eye’s retina over time, so it can't be fixed by wearing glasses. It starts with a steady loss of your peripheral sight and (very!) bad vision in the dark/at night. At the moment I still play a lot of sport and can do all the things I want to in life. However, choroideremia has already made life difficult at times, for example Matt, Nick and I have all had to give up driving. Choroideremia causes your peripheral vision to deteriorate over many years and eventually lead to blindness. There is currently no known treatment or cure.

However, ground-breaking clinical trials are being run by leading medical professionals at Oxford and Moorfields Eye Hospitals. The trials are testing a gene therapy treatment which, if successful, would halt the deterioration of peripheral vision and possibly save people’s sight. A number of volunteers and I have had operations in one of each of our eyes, which involved injecting a healthy sight gene into the retina. My right eye was operated on and continues to be tested against my untreated eye, to see if the deterioration of sight is halted. The condition is very slow and it will take years to see if there has been any affect, but we have all been given hope that we never had before!

These clinical trials and other similar eye treatment programmes, are made possible with funding from Fight For Sight. The charity aims to stop sight loss caused by different eye conditions and diseases by funding scientific research, becoming a voice for people affected by sight loss and providing people affected by sight loss with the information they need. Any contribution you can make, big or small, will play its part.

Thanks,

Mark