A medicine for patients with a rare genetic disease that can cause sudden blindness has been approved for use within the NHS in Scotland.
Idebenone (Raxone) will be used to treat Leber's Hereditary Optic Neuropathy (LHON), a severely disabling disease of the eye.
Experts believe the medicine offers the potential for improving the sight of a proportion of patients with the condition who are not yet blind. There are currently no other treatments for the disease.
The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) gave the green light for the drug to be used on the NHS after considering it through its Patient and Clinician Engagement (PACE) process, for medicines used at the end of life and for very rare conditions.
Two other new medicines were also approved by the SMC on Monday.
Belimumab (Benlysta) was accepted for the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), an autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks the body.
It causes inflammation and organ damage which can result in life-threatening complications for some patients.
Also accepted by the panel was micronised progesterone (Utrogestan), which can be used to support embryo implantation and pregnancy as part of fertility treatment.
SMC chairman Dr Alan MacDonald said: "The committee is pleased to be able to accept these three medicines for routine use.
"Through the evidence given at our PACE meeting by patient groups and clinicians, we know that our decision on idebenone will be welcomed.
"This is the first medicine to treat LHON and its availability will be of value to those who develop this devastating hereditary condition.
"For patients with SLE, belimumab offers the potential to improve control of the disease and reduce some of the challenging symptoms they experience.
"Micronised progesterone offers an additional option for use in treating infertility."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here