Antioxidants slow photoreceptor cell death in mouse models of retinitis pigmentosa

Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is a heterogeneous group of diseases in which one of a wide variety of mutations selectively causes rod photoreceptor cell death. After rods die, cone photoreceptors gradually die resulting in blindness. Antioxidants reduce cone cell death in rd1 / rd1 mice indicating that cones die from oxidative damage in that model of rapidly progressive RP. In this study, we sought to determine if this observation could be...