Hayfever drug found to repair optic nerve damage

An over-the-counter antihistamine has been shown to partially reverse optic nerve damage in people with multiple sclerosis, new research has found.

Clemastine fumarate is a histamine H1 antagonist, which blocks histamine at the H1 receptor, relieving allergic symptoms. A team of researchers led by Dr Ari Green of the Multiple Sclerosis Center at the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) – the researchers used 50 participants with MS and stable optic neuropathy.

Researchers recorded the time it took for a signal to travel from the retina to the visual cortex. During the study, the delays in this nerve transmission were reduced by an average of two milliseconds in each eye for patients receiving the antihistamine.