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Colour Blindness

Jyonna Manandhar
Our Lady Queen of the World CA
SBI3U Biology Night SChool
Lucy Araujo
November 25 2024
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Colour Blindness

What is it - Introduction

Color blindness is when you see colors differently from other people because of how your eyes

perceive them. Scientifically, color blindness is known as monochromacy or cerebral

achromatopsia and sometimes informally called Daltonism hence the French translation of color

blindness “Daltonien”. It is caused by the lack of pigments in certain nerve cells of the eye that

sense color. Some symptoms of color blindness may include not being able to see colour at all,

seeing different colours than those around you, or many colours looking the same in rare cases,

such as when you get amblyopia (lazy eye), nystagmus(where the eye might make several

uncontrolled movements), light sensitivity or generally poor vision. The most common colours

for that to happen are green and red. This is because, in the eyes, there are three types of cones

that see colour: red, blue, and Green in the retina. The eye uses these cones when the light comes

in to perceive colour. Red and green are the most common to be absent but having the blue one

absent or all of them absent (in which case becomes complete colour blindness) is most

definitely possible. In some cases, colour blindness may vary depending on lighting conditions

but when someone is completely colour blind they only see in shades of grey.

Overall levels of colour seen could be represented in sections Firstly, Anomalous Trichromacy,

where all of the cones function but there may be one that is dysfunctional, about half of people

with anomalous trichromacy can see similarly to those with dichromacy; it can be separated into

subsections. Protanomaly is a reduced sensitivity to red light. Tritanomaly is a reduced

sensitivity to blue light, it is the most rare of the three, and people with Tritanomaly find it

difficult to identify differences between blue and yellow, violet and red, and blue and green;

instead, they often see things in red, pink, black, white, grey and turquoise. Deuteranomaly, a
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reduced sensitivity to green light, is the most common of the three. Secondly, there is

Dichromacy, where there are 2 functional cones in the retina while only one is dysfunctional.

The green and Red spectrums may overlap which is the root of the commonly known, further

explained red/green colorblindness as seen in Figure 1 where the journey on how light travels in

an eye with red-green colorblindness and the colour percepting green, red, and blue rods are

shown next to the comparison of an array of colour a person with normal vision would see

compared to an arrow of the same colours but in a version a red-green colour blind person would

see. Protanopia is where someone is unable to perceive red light, people who suffer from this

often see the world “muddy” with pops of yellow as seen in Figure 2 where colour wheels seen

by people with different types of colour blindness (deuteranopia, Protanopia, Tritanopia, and

regular vision) are being compared. People with deuteranopia are unable to perceive green light

and people with tritanopia are unable to perceive blue light. Lastly, monochromacy is where no

colour can be seen and is often referred to as total colour blindness.

History

Colour blindness was first discovered by John Dalton by studying his own and his

brother's visual impairment in 1794. He then started conducting experiments on his friends and

family which led him to make significant discoveries that at the time were not confirmed. After

his death, DNA was taken from his eye which proved his theories on his own colorblindness and

the studies that he performed. Although his discovery was a breakthrough, he is more known for

his contributions to atomism. Historical studies in the early 20’th century have shown that only

sons may inherit normal colour vision from mothers while daughter may inherit it from either

says the oxford journal of heredity in 1919, colour blindness is a sex linked gene that is

transmitted through the sex chromosome says the American Naturalist on the University of
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Chicago’s Press Journal in 1924, the inability to see red or greed can be put in to graduation with

purple and yellow creating white due to lack of green and red as said by Acta Ophthalmologica

in 2009.

Inheritance

Colour Blindness is most commonly caused by gene inheritance. It follows an X-linked

recessive inheritance pattern. In specific, the gene that carries the red/green colour blindness is

found in the X chromosome. A red-Green colour chromosome is passed down in the 23rd

chromosome from mother to son. That is the same chromosome that determines gender. Because

males have an X and Y chromosome while females have 2 X chromosomes. This is why colour

blindness is more predominant in men, for a male to inherit colour blindness, only his X

chromosome must be affected while in females, both X chromosomes must defect. This is shown

as an example in the diagram in Figure 4 where the mother has colour blindness with the carrier

gene, and the father has colour blindness as well causing ½ of their daughters to have colour

blindness while the other ½ become carriers while the sons have a 50% chance of either being

colour blind or not. Despite this, men cannot pass the colour-blind gene to their sons because

their X chromosomes only go to daughters. Daughters may only have colour blindness if their

father is colour blind and if their mother is a carrier. Blue/Yellow colour blindness does not

segregate between genders as it is not inherited through sex chromosomes. Several factors may

increase odds of having colour blindness other than being male; these include having certain

diseases such as diabetes, glaucoma, macular degeneration, Alzheimer’s, leukemia and sickle

cell anemia, and certain drugs such as hydroxychloroquine also known as Plaquenil which is

used to treat diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. The diseases such as glaucoma or macular

degeneration affect the eye nerves and somewhat alter the cones manually and have little to do
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with genetics in terms of inheriting colour blindness. Plaquenil contributes to colour blindness as

it tampers with the macula, the central portion of the retina which is responsible for having clear

and most of our coloured vision.

Statistics

For perspective, In the UK, 8% of the male population has colour blindness and 4.5% of

the entire population has it as of 2024. Worldwide, this number is over 300 million 1 out of 12

being male and 1 out of 200 being female. In general, males have a 1 in 12 chance of being

colour blind. In terms of ethnicity, those who are caucasian as shown in the graph below with a

prevalence of 5.6% which is 4 times larger than that of the prevalence of the black population.

This thus makes caucasian males the most likely to inherit colour blindness followed by Asian,

Hispanic then Black. As mentioned earlier, people who take certain medications for rheumatoid

arthritis, glaucoma, and macular degeneration are also groups of people who suffer from colour

blindness because of the medications that they take and the effects of their conditions.

Life with colour blindness

People who suffer from colour blindness often suffer setbacks in their day-to-day lives.

Some of these include choosing their food, driving, education, sports, and more. One of the most

important setbacks that colour blindness gives people is what they intake. One that is colour

blind may have difficulty determining whether or not their food is cooked or has gone bad. An

example of this is in Figure 6 where a photo of a raw hamburger patty is being compared, some

meats turn grey when cooked and most meats generally change colour, This needs constant

feeling, timing, or tasting to find out if their meat is cooked which the patty shows us as without

the comparison, the colourblind version would look cooked to the unknowing eye. In the case of

steak, the person could be ok but if it were to be other types of meat such as chicken, the person
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could suffer from harmful diseases and would not know until severe symptoms show. In terms of

driving, a less-experienced driver could have trouble seeing traffic lights and such and could

cause many major accidents that could harm and kill others whether pedestrian or fellow driver;

this also applies to being a pedestrian. In terms of education, research shows that there is a

significant amount of lack of awareness of the condition leading to lack of support throughout

their education. This in turn affects people in the workforce as similar problems arise. People

with colour blindness may also come across setbacks when playing certain sports. Some may

have difficulties as a player when it comes to team contact sports such as football where

recognizing your team may rely heavily on colour, seeing equipment may also be dangerous as

some colours may blend in with others. It also applies to spectators of that sport as they may feel

excluded from others as following the game would be difficult.

Current Research and Treatments

Something that helps people who are colour blind in their day to day life is special

glasses or contact lenses. These lenses have coloured filters that absorb or filter out colours that

exist in between red and green on the colour spectrum as seen in Figure 6. A major flaw in this

aid is that it only works for those who have mild red-green colourblindness.

If one suspects that they or someone they know has colour blindness, a common

way to tell is by doing the Ishihara test as seen in Figure 7 where Ishihara circles are

created to show different numbers that only people with certain abilities to see certain

colours can see. Through the select vision of certain colours, someone with regular

vision may see one number, but for example in the third circle, if someone were to have

colour blindness, they would not be seeing the number six, which one with regular colour

seeing abilities would see. Throughout the years, research shows that this is the most
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widely used test to figure out if some have colour blindness and to figure out which type.

The test consists of a circle created by 38 plates that are irregularly placed and irregular

in size. These plates are coloured in two or more colours and display information which

is usually numbers. As of today, there is no cure for colour blindness but gene therapy to

overcome that is being developed. It has been successfully tested on monkeys but has still

yet to be tested on humans. Gene therapy research so far has been mostly directed at

red-green colour blindness and the major obstacle that the research is facing is whether or

not gene therapy will be safe for humans. Researchers are unsure as to whether or not the

effects will be the same on humans as it is on monkeys and they fear infectious side

effects, addiction, or risk of complete vision loss but also psychological effects that may

come with the therapy.

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