Overview

• In a randomized trial of 24 patients, lamivudine alone improved reading accuracy by an average of 9.8 letters in four weeks compared with a 1.8-letter loss on placebo and boosted acuity by 16.9 letters after bevacizumab versus 5.3 letters with bevacizumab alone.
• Researchers link lamivudine’s benefit to its inhibition of inflammasomes, immune complexes that drive retinal inflammation in diabetic macular edema.
• Oral dosing at roughly $20 monthly could replace or supplement bevacizumab injections priced at up to $2,000 per month, improving access for patients with limited specialty care.
• Teams at UVA Health and Universidade Federal de São Paulo plan larger, longer trials to confirm safety, efficacy and optimal dosing before clinical use.
• Investigators have also engineered a second-generation derivative, K9, designed to block inflammasomes with potentially fewer side effects.