Eye and Vision

A clinical trial is being launched in three African countries of a drug that could eliminate onchocerciasis, or river blindness, one of the leading infectious causes of blindness across Africa. The drug, moxidectin, is being investigated for its potential to kill or sterilize the adult worms of Onchocerca volvulus, which cause onchocerciasis.

New ways of diagnosing and treating patients with glaucoma will be piloted in two areas in Wales, Health Minister Edwina Hart announced today.

The ophthalmic diagnostic centre pilot will evaluate the feasibility of diagnosing and monitoring of glaucoma by optometrists working in the community, supported by hospital consultants. Subject to the outcome of the pilot, plans will be developed to roll it out across Wales.

Researchers at Queens University Belfast have found a promising treatment for vision loss accompanied by aging. The condition, early age-related macular (AMD) degeneration, is a leading cause of blindness n the Western world. Scientists studied 400 people to find that supplements containing high levels of carotenoids, antioxidants found in yellow and orange fruits and vegetables can slow vision loss associated with age-related macular degeneration.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is taking steps to improve contact lens safety by reminding consumers of the importance of following proper cleaning and storing procedures. Consumers who do not follow instructions for contact lens care and use increase their risk of serious eye infections that can lead to blindness.

Certain eye conditions appear to put patients at greater risk for having a failed cornea transplant, according the Cornea Donor Study (CDS), a multi-center clinical trial conducted by the National Eye Institute. The study concludes that patients with glaucoma and patients who had corneal swelling following an earlier cataract surgery were more likely to experience failure of the cornea transplant than were other patients in the study.

Dry eye disease is common among American men older than 50 and increases with age, high blood pressure, benign prostate disease and the use of antidepressants, according to researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) in a report in the June issue of Archives of Ophthalmology.

As part of its '101 Ways You Can Help Fight Cancer' campaign, the Institute for Good Medicine at the Pennsylvania Medical Society has dedicated its next Good Medicine web show on eye cancer and the importance of eye exams for eye cancer detection.

The web show on eye exams and eye cancer detection can be seen on the Family Health and Wellness website at http://www.myfamilywellness.org/Videos/Eye-Cancer.aspx or on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4UPd21UDMc.

It is very important to be sure that little children do not have problems with a "lazy eye" or strabismus. Unfortunately these days, medical students and pediatrics residents don't seem to be taught how to look for strabismus. If a child has a eye that is not focusing properly and wandering off to one side of the other, then the child's brain will start suppressing the vision in one eye, so that double vision does not occur.

A University of Toronto study provides the first direct evidence that our mood literally changes the way our visual system filters our perceptual experience suggesting that seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses is more biological reality than metaphor.

A University of Iowa Health Care research team is participating in a study, funded by a five-year, $16 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, to investigate the cause of idiopathic intracranial hypertension and test a potential new treatment.

Idiopathic intracranial hypertension is a disorder of elevated pressure inside the cranium, or skull, with an unknown cause. Untreated, it may cause blindness.