Woman Can See Again After World’s First Transplant of a Central Retina

Elena with her dog Joe, and Professor Michele Reibaldi – credit, Ospedale Molinette, supplied

From Turin comes a surgical world-first: the simultaneous transplant of a complete human macula, along with the cornea, sclera, and connective tissue, from one of the patient’s eyes to the other.

It allowed a woman blind for several years to immediately gain enough vision to recognize both her son and her faithful canine companion, Joe.

La Stampa, a Turn-based national newspaper, reported that the intervention was lead by the “intuition” of ocular surgeon Professor Michele Reibaldi, who himself described the process as a “complicated marathon,” lasting 6 hours and requiring careful coordination by surgeons, anesthetists, and orderlies.

The patient was 67-year-old Elena, who lost her eyesight in a road incident which completely severed the optic nerve in her left eye. Responsible for transmitting light absorbed and delineated through the eye to the brain, the irreversible damage was not shared by the rest of eye tissues, which remained largely intact.

In an interesting coincidence, the reverse was true for her right eye. While the optic nerve was undamaged, the trauma of the crash destroyed other parts of her eye including the retina, the cornea, and the portion of the eye containing ocular stem cells, rendering any hope of a normal corneal transplant impossible.

In short, there was enough undamaged components between her two eyes to create one that could function. The only problem was that it would require a surgery never done in the history of medicine, a macular transplant. The macula is a small, light-sensitive region at the back of the retina, itself located in the middle of the eyeball, responsible for high-definition sight. The common cause of blindness, macular degeneration, refers to this small tissue.

Elena also needed a new cornea, and the sclera—the white of the eyeball. Professor Reibaldi resolved to salvage those from the left eye and transplant them all to the right eye, in which the ocular nerve was preserved through the crash.

“This procedure represents a new frontier in ocular surgery,” Reibaldi, who practices at the Molinette Hospital in Turn’s City of Health and Science, said according to a translation. “Before today, such a contemporaneous transplant of the anterior eye tissue had occurred just once before, while the central retina has never been possible.”

“Now we will wait and see how well the transplanted retina functions, though early signs are encouraging.”

Follow-ups have confirmed that the tissues have reattached correctly, and that Elena is regaining sight in her right eye.Reibaldi praised the extraordinary collaboration within the team which carried out the procedure, before adding that the biggest prize for them was “the incredible moment in which Elena, opening her eyes, could finally recognize her son and faithful companion in life, Joe the dog.” Woman Can See Again After World’s First Transplant of a Central Retina

Read More........→August 27, 2026

Scientists Have Found Climate-Resistant Coral Reefs Around the World Totaling the Size of Wisconsin

A sophisticated AI-powered examination of coral reef resistance extrapolated into the future found that there’re about 64,000 square miles of coral reefs on Earth that could still be resisting climate change by 2050.

The common theory states that CO2 emissions create a greenhouse effect which warms the seas which causes coral reefs to bleach or even die, yet there are environments—as GNN has frequently reported—where corals seem to be more resilient.

The authors of this new study found that when they used 45,000 observations of coral reefs going back as far as 1960 as the data set for an AI model to examine, it predicted according to 46 different criteria that 25 years from now there’d still be swaths of coal reefs totaling the size of Wisconsin located primarily in 8 countries, and that these would be capable of surviving and thriving in the warming seas.

The findings were presented at Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa, Kenya, and are available on the preprint server EcoEvoRxiv.

Most of the coral distribution was plotted out in the Philippines, Indonesia, Cuba, the Bahamas, and Australia. Belize, Nicaragua, and the Turks and Caicos Islands also showed coral resilience in 2050 according to the estimates.

The criteria for where in the world the AI would map as good coral habitat comes from a concept of ‘coral refuges’ which are observations that coral species can either endure warming seas, recover from damage faster, or avoid damage altogether in certain places.

Where these are in the world comes from the 45,000 observations mentioned earlier.

Why coral seem to enjoy these conditions in these particular places isn’t exactly clear—particularly as regards Nicaragua’s neighbor Honduras, where the country’s largest coral reef is also the victim of substantial ecosystem disturbance by human activity, yet seems to be flourish year round.

Sara Hashemi, a daily correspondent at Smithsonian Magazine, wrote that the authors of the new study want their work “to offer a road map for where countries should invest conservation funding, especially for small nations with limited resources.”

Hashemi started her report by noting that “it’s hard to feel optimistic for coral reefs” these days. It’s hard—if one doesn’t read GNN.

There’s great news on coral all around the world. In terms of protections, 77,000 square miles of tropical seas will be off limits to fishing thanks to bold conservation action by Papua New Guinea this year.

Located in the legendary Coral Triangle, where the Pacific and Indian Oceans meet, the newly-designated Western Manus Marine Protected Area will form part of the newly established Melanesian Ocean Corridor of Reserves, a network of national and jointly managed protected areas spanning Fiji, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea.

The science of coral breeding and restoration is advancing in leaps and bounds. This January, GNN reported that scientists on the island nation of Mauritius are naturally breeding heat-resistant corals that faced a bleaching event last summer with 98% survival rates.

Marine biologists weren’t even able to breed coral in a lab 20 years ago, but recently, scientists on the Maldives bred 10,000 corals in just weeks using a portable station shipped in a container to the archipelago.

In 2022, the breeding of coral took a cosmic leap with the first ever out-of-season spawning event for lab-bred corals along Australia’s northeastern coast.Even just learning about these incredible organisms and what they’re capable of is an ongoing and encouraging process. GNN reported in 2024 that a Nat Geo expedition found the world’s largest coral ever, a leviathan shadow on the seabed that stretched out longer than a blue whale—longer than 4 tennis courts. Scientists Have Found Climate-Resistant Coral Reefs Around the World Totaling the Size of Wisconsin

Read More........→July 03, 2026