Proper Light Exposure in Pregnancy Crucial for Baby's Vision

Proper exposure to light in pregnancy is crucial for a baby's eye development, a new study reveals.

Making a breakthrough in unveiling the mechanisms that play a significant role in fetal eye development, a team of scientists at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of California found exposure to light during pregnancy plays an important role in a baby's vision related health.

The findings reported  online in journal Nature come as a contradiction to the earlier belief that exposure to light after birth has a significant effect for a healthy eye.

"This fundamentally changes our understanding of how the retina develops," co-author of the study, Dr. Richard Lang, said in a news release. "We have identified a light-response pathway that controls the number of retinal neurons. This has downstream effects on developing vasculature in the eye and is important because several major eye diseases are vascular diseases."

The new study found entry of large numbers of photons (quantum of light) into the mother's body during the last stages of pregnancy directly activating a protein, known as melanopsin in the fetus that plays an important role in vision.

According to the authors, the light-response pathway helps in limiting the number of blood vessels formed in retina and for the development of a healthy eye. So an abnormal blood vessel development known as retinopathy of prematurity (ROP- unlimited growth of retina vessels) becomes very common in premature birth.

The findings are based on experiments conducted by the scientists on pregnant mice. Pregnant mice were subjected to  dark and normal day-night environments.  Function of the light response pathway and vascular development of fetal eyes were examined through altering a gene that makes melanopsin (opsin gene Opn4).

At the end of the study, proving their theory, researchers found pregnant mice who were staying in dark environment during the last stages of pregnancy and mice with mutated Opn4  gene having abnormal retinal vascular growth.