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NF Clinical Trials Consortium Study Reveals New Vision Problems in Children with NF1 Optic Gliomas

As part of the NF Clinical Trials Consortium study on vision function after treatment for NF1-optic glioma, lead author, Dr. Gena Heidary, discovered additional vision deficits in children. While most clinical trials focus on visual acuity, the ability to read numbers or letters at a distance, this new study found that children also have problems seeing the entire area of sight, termed the visual field.
In this new report, Dr. Heidary found that nearly three-quarters of children had visual field defects following treatment for an optic glioma. Moreover, over 80% of children with visual field deficits prior to treatment either had no improvement or worsening after treatment. Future NF1-optic glioma clinical studies will incorporate visual field testing and will aim to determine how visual acuity and visual field defects are related.
This report was published in the Journal of the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus.


Heidary G, Fisher MJ, Liu GT, Ferner RE, Gutmann DH, Listernick RH, Kapur K, Loguidice M, Ardern-Holmes SL, Avery RA, Hammond C, Hoffman RO, Hummel TR, Kuo A, Reginald A, Ullrich NJ. Visual field outcomes in children treated for neurofibromatosis type 1-associated optic pathway gliomas: a multicenter retrospective study.  J AAPOS. 2020 Nov 20:S1091-8531(20)30228-7. doi: 10.1016/j.jaapos.2020.07.013. PMID: 33221469