A team of international researchers, including a Montreal physician, has claimed to have discovered the one of the cause behind the prevalence of blindness amongst newborns. The discovery is being considered as a breakthrough, which has paved way for the development of a significant treatment.

It has been revealed that the team of researchers has found a genetic mutation, which they stated is held responsible for the occurrence of Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA). The condition is explained to be an inherited eye disease, which affects the vision of one in 80,000 newborns.

Dr. Robert Koenekoop, who runs a blindness clinic at the Montreal Children's Hospital and was a part of the team suggests that the discovery could help develop treatments, which would be effective even in case of patients suffering from glaucoma and macular degeneration.

Dr. Koenekoop said, "The genetic finding is huge, for the blindness researchers it's like discovering the mythical city of Atlantis. Not only did we discover the genetic mutation, we know what this gene does".

He further added that with the help of this discovery, now targeted treatments can be developed, which will be initially experimented on animals suffering from LCA and then, it would be tested on humans.