Feature Channels: Vision

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Millions of people who put up with seeing annoying specks drift through their field of vision may now have a safe, high-tech solution to their problem. A study of patients who had laser treatment to vaporize these flecks and spots known as floaters, showed a very low complication rate, according to research presented today at AAO 2017, the 121st Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

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A study of dry eye sufferers who inserted a handheld neurostimulator device in their nose to make their eyes produce more tears experienced significant relief from their disease, according to research presented today at AAO 2017, the 121st Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

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Patients with age-related macular degeneration or diabetic retinopathy who used a mobile application to test their vision at home got comparable results to in-office vision testing, according to research presented today at AAO 2017, the 121st Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. The findings suggest that the smartphone app may help patients take better care of their vision.

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Women who took estrogen-only hormone replacement therapy after ovary removal had a lower risk of developing glaucoma, according to research presented today at AAO 2017, the 121st Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

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Research to Prevent Blindness and the American Academy of Ophthalmology today announced that they have created a new category of grant to support researchers who want to use the Academy’s IRIS® Registry database to conduct population-based studies in ophthalmology and blindness prevention.

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The American Academy of Ophthalmology today announced key milestones and clinical insights from studies powered by its clinical database. The IRIS® Registry (Intelligent Research In Sight) has amassed more than 41.2 million unique patients in its database, representing 166.2 million patient visits, covering 11 percent of the U.S. population.

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Research to Prevent Blindness and the American Academy of Ophthalmology today announced that they have created a new category of grant to support researchers who want to use the Academy’s IRIS® Registry database to conduct population-based studies in ophthalmology and blindness prevention.

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Patients who had lost their sight to an inherited retinal disease could see well enough to navigate a maze after being treated with a new gene therapy, according to research presented today at AAO 2017, the 121st Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

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New national research led by Jonathan Lass, MD of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center has found that corneal donor tissue can be safely stored for 11 days before transplantation surgery to correct eye problems in people with diseases of the cornea. This is four days longer than the current conventional maximum of seven days in the United States.

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USC Roski Eye Institute experts will present advances in stem cell–based therapy, biopsy techniques, diabetic retinal detachment repair and more at the American Academy of Ophthalmology 2017 meeting in New Orleans, Nov. 10-14.

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Inside cells, protein “motors” act like trucks on tiny cellular highways to deliver life-sustaining cargoes. Now a team led by Rutgers University–New Brunswick researchers has discovered how cells deploy enzymes to place traffic control and “roadway under construction” signs along cellular highways.

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The development of new therapies and cures would be impossible without patients volunteering for clinical research studies. In exchange, volunteers often receive care based on the latest research, while gaining the satisfaction of helping others. That was the case with David, a research nurse who has had type 1 diabetes since he was 11 years old. (He asked that we not use his full name.) Now 66, he owes his 20/20 vision to his participation in clinical research funded by the National Eye Institute (NEI), a part of the National Institutes of Health.

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An experimental “golden” potato could hold the power to prevent disease and death in developing countries where residents rely heavily upon the starchy food for sustenance, new research suggests. A serving of the yellow-orange lab-engineered potato has the potential to provide as much as 42 percent of a child’s recommended daily intake of vitamin A and 34 percent of a child’s recommended intake of vitamin E, according to a recent study co-led by researchers at The Ohio State University.

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Rural counties continue to rank lowest among counties across the U.S., in terms of health outcomes. A group of national organizations including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National 4-H Council are leading the way to close the rural health gap.

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A research team led by scientists at the Krembil Research Institute in Toronto has identified a new neuroprotective factor that has the potential to help people suffering from the common blinding disease glaucoma.

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The eye is more than a window to the soul; it is a window to the brain. To highlight the important connection between vision science and neuroscience, the NIH’s National Eye Institute is kicking off its 50th anniversary celebration with the symposium “Vision and the Brain,” Friday, November 10, 2017, at the Marriott Marquis in Washington, D.C. The event takes place in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and is the first in series of symposia scheduled through 2018.

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Next week, thousands of eye physicians and surgeons will attend AAO 2017, the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s 121st annual meeting.

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The eyes are for seeing, but they have other important biological functions, including automatic visual reflexes that go on without awareness. The reflexive system of the human eye also produces a conscious, visual experience, according to a new study from researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine and School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Study by Kellogg Eye Center reveals double vision associated with 850,000 outpatient and emergency department visits annually but life-threatening diagnoses are rare.

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Research to Prevent Blindness-supported researchers in New York (at Columbia University and University of Rochester) made a critical discovery about the gene mutation that causes many retinal degenerative diseases, opening the door for a new line of research into potential treatments.

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Researchers at University of Utah Health have identified a protein (ARF6) that when inhibited reduces diabetic retinopathy, a condition that results when blood vessels at the back of the eye leak fluid into the eye, impairing vision.

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A protein shaped like a "Y" makes scientists do a double-take and may change the way they think about a protein sometimes implicated in glaucoma. The Y is a centerpiece in myocilin, binding four other components nicknamed propellers together like balloons on strings.

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For many people with hearing challenges, trying to follow a conversation in a crowded restaurant or other noisy venue is a major struggle, even with hearing aids. Now, Mass. Eye and Ear researchers reporting in Current Biology on October 19th have some good news: time spent playing a specially designed, brain-training audiogame could help.

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A Wayne State University research team recently received a $1.9 million grant from the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health to develop new treatment approaches for Endophthalmitis, a severe inflammation of the interior of the eye caused by contaminating microorganisms that enter the eye following trauma or surgery.

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A medical condition that puzzled physicians, scientists and veterinarians, and remained obscure for decades, was long known by indigenous peoples in Colombia.

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Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center utilized their Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB) grants to make progress in characterizing the genetic and physiologic components of Usher syndrome—the most common cause of deaf-blindness.

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Children who are considered to be at risk of developing eye cancer should receive genetic counseling and testing as soon as possible to clarify risk for the disease. This is the consensus of leading ophthalmologists, pathologists and geneticists, who worked to develop the first U.S. guidelines on how to screen for the most common eye tumor affecting children.

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NIH scientists have simplified manufacturing and dosing of a potential drug candidate for the autoimmune eye disease uveitis—a vision-threatening condition that accounts for about 15 percent of blindness in the U.S. The protein in question, part of the immune system signaling molecule interleukin-35 (IL-35), also shows efficacy in treating a mouse model of multiple sclerosis. The research was conducted at the National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health.

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A recent study by a team of investigators at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Keck Medicine of USC, provides proof of concept for a safe and effective way to derive genetic information from a retinoblastoma tumor.

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Lighthouse Guild is calling for a stronger effort to reverse the worldwide increase in blindness and vision impairment in response to a new study that analyzed the leading causes of blindness in 98 countries. The call-to-action comes on World Sight Day.

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Lighthouse Guild will host the 2017 Alfred W. Bressler Vision Science Symposium and Award Luncheon and The Pisart Award Lecture and Reception at The University Club of New York, October 20-21, 2017.

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Farsighted preschoolers and kindergartners have a harder time paying attention and that could put them at risk of slipping behind in school, a new study suggests.

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Several studies indicate that the prevalence of myopia is increasing in the U.S. and worldwide, and researchers project that the trend will continue in the coming decades. Otherwise known as nearsightedness, myopia occurs when the eye grows too long from front to back. Instead of focusing images on the retina—the light-sensitive tissue in the back of the eye—images are focused at a point in front of the retina. As a result, people with myopia have good near vision but poor distance vision.

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Some say the eyes are a window to the soul. Now, thanks to researchers at the Technion, the eyes (or at least the motion of a person's eyelids) can also be used to diagnose eye diseases and neurologically expressed diseases, including Parkinson’s disease.

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A proposal to create a living model of the human retina, the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye, won $90,000 in the National Eye Institute (NEI) 3-D Retina Organoid Challenge (3-D ROC). The NEI 3-D ROC is an initiative that seeks to design human retinas from stem cells. Erin Lavik, Sc.D., at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, led the awarded team. The NEI is part of the National Institutes of Health.

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From self-folding robots, to robotic endoscopes, to better methods for computer vision and object detection, researchers at the University of California San Diego have a wide range of papers and workshop presentations at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (or IROS) which takes place from Sept. 24 to 28 in Vancouver, Canada.

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NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) recently unveiled a state-of-the-art mobile testing unit in a push to reduce blindness-causing eye diseases across the city.

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Patients with any stage of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) carry signs of the disease in their blood that may be found through special laboratory tests, according to a new study led by AMD researchers based at Massachusetts Eye and Ear.

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Frontotemporal degeneration (FTD) is a progressive neurodegenerative condition that is present in tens of thousands of Americans, but is often difficult to diagnose accurately. Now in a study published this week online ahead of print in Neurology, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have found evidence that a simple eye exam and retinal imaging test may help improve that accuracy.

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Comprehensive eye exams can detect a variety of eye conditions that, left untreated in a child, could result in partial or complete loss of vision later in life.

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Penn-CHOP Researchers Found that Students Who Took a Course in Art Observation Significantly Improved Clinical Observation and Professional Development Skills

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It was dark as night during the recent total solar eclipse, yet people and objects were easier to see than on a typical moonless night. Scientists at The Ohio State University have discovered a possible biological explanation – the presence (or absence) of a protein in the retina known as a GABA receptor.

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An experimental imaging tool that uses a targeted fluorescent dye successfully lit up the benign brain tumors of patients during removal surgery, allowing surgeons to identify tumor tissue, a new study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania shows. The tumors, known as pituitary adenomas, are the third most common brain tumor, and very rarely turn cancerous, but can cause blindness, hormonal disorders, and in some cases, gigantism.

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HHMI Investigator Michael Dyer and colleagues are widely sharing data and samples from nearly 100 new tumor models representing 12 pediatric cancers.

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St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is offering the global scientific community no-cost access to an unprecedented collection of pediatric solid tumor samples and data to fuel research and move treatment forward

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When Tim Anegon became an eye tissue donor after his death in 2014, it wasn’t just one person he would touch with his eyes — it was millions as University of Michigan researchers use donated tissue in the fight against diabetic eye disease.

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People with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS), a disorder characterized by repetitive episodes of paused and shallow breathing during sleep, are approximately ten times more likely to develop glaucoma.

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A study led by researchers at Cedars-Sinai and NeuroVision Imaging LLC provides the scientific basis for using noninvasive eye imaging to detect the pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer’s. The experimental technology, developed by Cedars-Sinai and NeuroVision, scans the retina using techniques that can identify beta-amyloid protein deposits that mirror those in the brain.

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A compound of specific bioactive products from a major family of enzymes reduced the severity of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in a preclinical model, according to a new study led by Massachusetts Eye and Ear researchers.

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Medical experts from the renowned Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia are available for interviews about the vision risks associated with the Eclipse, what eye conditions aren’t safe for eclipse viewing, how the damage can occur and how to safely watch the event.