Retinitis Pigmentosa Retinal Degeneration Causes Night Blindness Symptoms

Retinitis pigmentosa is a slow progressing eye disease in which your retina degenerates. It is an inherited disorder, therefore eye injury, eye infection or any type of environmental factors are not what’s causing your retinal degeneration.

You were born with retinitis pigmentosa already programmed into your retinal cells. Or your degenerating retina may be associated with other health conditions, for instance:

  • Refsum disease
  • Usher syndrome
  • Alport syndrome
  • Bardet-Biedl syndrome
  • Waardenburg syndrome

Night blindness, aka nyctalopia, is often the earliest and most frequent symptom of retinitis pigmentosa. The poor night vision symptom because the retina’s peripheral night vision rods are affected first.

Retinitis pigmentosa also causes these other symptoms as the health condition progresses:

  • central vision loss
  • color perception loss
  • peripheral vision loss
  • photopsia ~ flashes of light

In some cases, retinal cones are the main site of degeneration. Instead of night blindness, the first symptoms experienced are decreased central vision and color discrimination issues.

This retinal degeneration may eventually cause you to be classified as legally blind. Yet, retinitis pigmentosa usually doesn’t cause complete blindness.

Those with retinitis pigmentosa often develop cataracts earlier than normal. Fortunately, they can be removed should they cause additional vision problems.

For now, there is no effective treatment for retinitis pigmentosa. Wearing sunglasses to protect your retina from ultraviolet light is often recommended to preserve your vision.

A nutritional therapy of vitamin A supplements has been shown to slightly slow down retinal degeneration progression for some. But, taking too much vitamin A can be toxic in contrast to the rather insignificant benefits.

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