Boston doctor honored for sight-saving research

A Boston ophthalmologist has won a prestigious international prize for preventing blindness in diabetes patients.

Dr. Lloyd M. Aiello, a professor at Harvard Medical School and physician at Joslin Diabetes Center, will receive the 2008/2009 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize on Sept. 29, Harvard announced yesterday. The honor has been a precursor for seven Nobel Prizes.

The $200,000 award recognizes pioneering treatments Aiello developed in 1967 with his father-in-law, the late William P. Beetham, to halt a complication of diabetes that at the time led to vision loss in 95 percent of patients. In diabetes, weak blood vessels proliferate in the retina, causing hemorrhages that leave the patient blind.

Aiello and Beetham noticed that patients whose retinas had scarring from other conditions fared better than other patients with retinal bleeding, Harvard said. The doctors mimicked the scarring with laser treatments that are still used today, when the proportion of diabetic patients who lose their vision has fallen to 5 percent.

"We've come an incredible distance, but now we need to work toward preserving vision with a pill so that we can retire the lasers," Aiello said in a statement released by Harvard. "My son, Lloyd P. Aiello, is tackling this project, and I think he has a good chance of succeeding in 10 to 20 years."