Is there a treatment for color blindness?
Summary:
- There are many different kinds of color blindness.
- The most prevalent color blindness is related to the colors red and green.
- Glasses for color blindness don’t solve the problem, just make the already visible colors more vibrant.
- There is no available treatment for color blindness.
Every creature perceives the world in its own specific way. This can be taken very literally, as various organisms evolved their eyes differently. The process of eye development started around 600 million years ago when the first organisms developed their first photoreceptors, allowing them to react to light. “Just” 60 million years later, the first image-forming eyes started to emerge [1]. Even though the difference in the perception of the world seems obvious when the sheer number of species is considered, it stands true also among representatives of the same species.
The goal of this article is to briefly explain what color blindness is and to discuss some proposed solutions for it. The reason for writing this article is even simpler – I am color blind.
The human eye contains three different photoreceptors called cones. These cones are called L, M, and S for long (yellow to red colors), medium (cyan to orange colors), and short-wavelength (violet to cyan colors) ranges of the visible spectrum, respectively [2]. There are many misunderstandings related to color blindness and how it influences the vision of a person suffering from it. While total color blindness is possible, it is very rare. It is very often correlated with intolerance to light called photophobia and involuntary eye movements called nystagmus [3]. Most common color vision deficiencies are connected with an anomaly in just one of the aforementioned cones. Red-green color type anomalies can be caused by defects in L or M cones. People with problems in the L cone are called protan, and with M cone – deutan. These types of anomalies are the most prevalent as they can be found in 8% of males of Northern European origin. Furthermore, individuals with a faulty S cone are called tritan. This ailment is responsible for defective blue-yellow vision. This problem is a lot less prevalent, as only 0.01% of individuals have it [2, 4]. There are a few popular tests which can easily detect these problems, like Ishihara Test or Farnsworth Munsell-15 test [3, 5].
In recent years, some alleged solutions were introduced to the public in the form of glasses with special lenses. A few of them, like products presented by companies EnChroma or VINO Optics, are currently very popular [5, 6]. Their alleged effectiveness can be observed on popular video streaming websites by searching for the phrase “color blind glasses”. Most of the results are presenting people who can allegedly finally see the full spectrum of colors around them. For someone who is deutan, like me, it seems like a very appealing possibility. Videos of people reacting to the colors around them after putting on special glasses can be engaging and emotional, but only scientific testing can check if the effect is real. Indeed, scientists tested how these glasses influence color deficiencies. The presented results showed that there is a change in the perception of colors. Unfortunately, that change leads to significant confusion when participants were asked to name the colors they were presented with. Participants were able to see some of the colors more vividly, but only the ones they were already able to see anyway. Furthermore, the tested glasses didn’t improve the results when Ishihara or Farnsworth Munsell-15 tests were conducted [5-7]. The most positive results were still not significant enough to consider the ailment cured or the problem solved [8].
Color blindness can have numerous implications for people’s lives [9]. One study suggests that color deficiency can even negatively impact the development of human personality [10]. Currently, the only real solution to color blindness could be gene therapy, but it is still in the experimental phase [11, 12]. For this reason, while some solutions may appear positive in a video, it is always a good idea to take a step back and look at the facts, and facts tell me that I will not be able to see the full spectrum of colors, at least not yet.
References:
- Lamb, T.D., S.P. Collin, and E.N. Pugh, Jr., Evolution of the vertebrate eye: opsins, photoreceptors, retina and eye cup. Nat Rev Neurosci, 2007. 8(12): p. 960-76.
- Martinez-Domingo, M.A., et al., Spectral Filter Selection for Increasing Chromatic Diversity in CVD Subjects. Sensors (Basel), 2020. 20(7).
- Ishihara, S., Ishihara’s Tests for Colour-blindness. 1972: Kanehara Shuppan.
- Deeb, S.S., The molecular basis of variation in human color vision. Clin Genet, 2005. 67(5): p. 369-77.
- Martinez-Domingo, M.A., et al., Assessment of VINO filters for correcting red-green Color Vision Deficiency. Opt Express, 2019. 27(13): p. 17954-17967.
- Bastien, K., D. Mallet, and D. Saint-Amour, Characterizing the Effects of Enchroma Glasses on Color Discrimination. Optom Vis Sci, 2020. 97(10): p. 903-910.
- Gomez-Robledo, L., et al., Do EnChroma glasses improve color vision for colorblind subjects? Opt Express, 2018. 26(22): p. 28693-28703.
- Varikuti, V.N.V., et al., Effect of EnChroma glasses on color vision screening using Ishihara and Farnsworth D-15 color vision tests. J AAPOS, 2020. 24(3): p. 157 e1-157 e5.
- Stoianov, M., et al., The impacts of abnormal color vision on people’s life: an integrative review. Qual Life Res, 2019. 28(4): p. 855-862.
- Cobb, S.R., Evidence for an effect by colour defect on personality. Percept Mot Skills, 1980. 51(1): p. 159-66.
- Mancuso, K., et al., Gene therapy for red-green colour blindness in adult primates. Nature, 2009. 461(7265): p. 784-7.
- Hassall, M.M., A.R. Barnard, and R.E. MacLaren, Gene Therapy for Color Blindness. Yale J Biol Med, 2017. 90(4): p. 543-551.