New research raises questions as to whether too many infants are getting tongue-tie surgery to help improve breastfeeding, despite limited medical evidence supporting the procedure. In a new study of 115 newborns, nearly 63 percent of children who were referred for surgery ended up not needing the procedure following a thorough feeding evaluation.
Mass. Eye and Ear is pleased to welcome David S. Friedman, MD, MPH, PhD, as Director of the Glaucoma Service, Co-Director of the Ophthalmology Glaucoma Center of Excellence, Medical Director of Clinical Research at Mass. Eye and Ear, and a member of the full-time faculty of the Harvard Medical School Department of Ophthalmology. Dr. Friedman will be the first incumbent of the Albert and Diane Kaneb Chair in Ophthalmology at Mass. Eye and Ear.
A research team at Massachusetts Eye and Ear has shown that microglia, the immune cells of the central nervous system—including the retina —serve as “gatekeepers” of neuroinflammation. Uveitis is one of the leading causes of blindness worldwide. In the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers describe for the first time a role for microglia in directing the initiation of autoimmune uveitis by orchestrating the inflammatory response within the retina.
Aalok Agarwala, MD, MBA, has been appointed the new Chief Medical Officer of Massachusetts Eye and Ear, and joined the senior leadership team April 1 in this new role.
A new study led by a research team from Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School describes how bacteria adapted to the modern hospital environment and repeatedly cause antibiotic-resistant bloodstream infections. This study examined one of the first sustained hospital outbreaks of a multidrug-resistant bacterium, Enterococcus faecalis, which occurred from the early through the mid-1980s, causing over 60 outbreak strains.
Corneal injuries are a common cause of visual impairment worldwide, with more than 1.5 million new cases of corneal blindness reported every year. With the goal of addressing this unmet clinical need, researchers set out to develop an adhesive designed for long-term integration with the cornea. The new technology, named GelCORE (gel for corneal regeneration), could one day reduce the need for surgery to repair injuries to the cornea, including those that would today require corneal transplantation.
Following a nationwide search, Mass. Eye and Ear named Aalok Agarwala, MD, MBA, as Chief Medical Officer, and Kathrin Bourdeu, MD, PhD, as Chief of Anesthesia.
Physicians at Massachusetts Eye and Ear have, for the first time, induced a sense of smell in humans by using electrodes in the nose to stimulate nerves in the olfactory bulb, a structure in the brain where smell information from the nose is processed and sent to deeper regions of brain. Reporting online today in International Forum of Allergy & Rhinology, the research team describes their results, which provide a proof of concept for efforts to develop implant technology to return the sense of smell to those who have lost it.
A research team from Massachusetts Eye and Ear describes a newly discovered mechanism in a report published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (JACI). The findings shed new light on our immune systems — and also pave the way for drug delivery techniques to be developed that harness this natural transportation process from one group of cells to another.
A new study led by researchers at Massachusetts Eye and Ear found that good performance on a piloting task was associated with lower vestibular thresholds, which represent stronger ability to sense and perceive information about motion, balance and spatial orientation. Published online today in the Journal of Neurophysiology, the findings suggest that astronauts or pilots with higher vestibular thresholds are more likely to become disoriented during flight, especially in situations when gravity is less than that on Earth – such as on the Moon.
Janey L. Wiggs, MD, PhD, the Paul A. Chandler Professor of Ophthalmology and Associate Director of the Ocular Genomics Institute at Harvard Medical School, and the Associate Chief for Clinical Research in Ophthalmology and Interim Glaucoma Service Director at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, has been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Medicine (NAM).
A research team from Massachusetts Eye and Ear and MIT has shown that immune cells in the eye that developed in response to early exposure to bacteria are a key contributor to progressive vision loss from glaucoma, the second leading cause of irreversible blindness in the world.
A research team at Massachusetts Eye and Ear has shown that microglia, the primary immune cells of the brain and retina, play a protective role in response to retinal detachment.
Joan W. Miller, M.D., the David Glendenning Cogan Professor and Chair of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and Chief of Ophthalmology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Massachusetts General Hospital, has been named the 2018 recipient of the celebrated Lucien Howe Medal from the American Ophthalmological Society (AOS) for her distinguished service to the fields of retina and ophthalmology.
A research team from Mass. Eye and Ear has shown that the “outer hair cells” within the ear can only be effective in amplifying sound when they are configured in a Y-shaped arrangement with respect to their supporting cells.
Joan W. Miller, M.D., the David Glendenning Cogan Professor and Chair of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and the Chief of Ophthalmology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Massachusetts General Hospital, will receive two prestigious awards recognizing her significant contributions to the field of retina and ophthalmology.
Patricia A. D'Amore, Ph.D., MBA, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for exceptional scholarship in the field of biomedicine.
Massachusetts Eye and Ear researchers have shown that mifepristone, a drug currently FDA-approved for chemical abortion, prevents the growth of vestibular schwannoma (also known as acoustic neuroma) cells. This sometimes-lethal intracranial tumor typically causes hearing loss and tinnitus. The findings, published online today in Scientific Reports, suggest that mifepristone is a promising drug candidate to be repositioned for the treatment of these tumors.
Massachusetts Eye and Ear made medical history on Tuesday by performing the first post-FDA approval gene therapy for patients with a form of inherited blindness. The occasion marks the beginning of a new era in medicine, as it is the first time any FDA-approved gene therapy has been given to a patient for any inherited disease.
New nonprofit organization will bring treatments to clinical trial for people at risk for blindness due to ultra-rare inherited retinal diseases. Boston, Mass. — Scientists and advocates today announced the formation of Odylia Therapeutics, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to creating gene therapies for ultra-rare genetic conditions causing blindness.
Through a partnership with John Hancock Financial Services, Massachusetts Eye and Ear is preparing a team of runners for the 2018 Boston Marathon.® “Team Eye and Ear” comprises 67 members fundraising in support of Mass. Eye and Ear’s research programs to fight disorders of the eyes, ears, nose, throat, head and neck.
David A. Solá-Del Valle, M.D., a board-certified ophthalmologist and fellowship-trained glaucoma specialist, has recently joined the Glaucoma Service at Mass. Eye and Ear.
Janey L. Wiggs, M.D., Ph.D., FARVO, Associate Chief of Ophthalmology Clinical Research and Associate Director of the Howe Laboratory at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, is the 2018 recipient of the Dr. David L. Epstein Award
Hearing loss is the most common form of sensory loss in humans, and almost half of cases have an underlying genetic cause.
Head and neck tumors that contain cells undergoing a partial epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition — which transforms them from neatly organized blocks into irregular structures that extrude into the surrounding environment — are more likely to invade and spread to other parts of the body, according to a new study led by researchers from Mass. Eye and Ear, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
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.
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.
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.
A research team from the Schepens Eye Research Institute of Massachusetts Eye and Ear has successfully prevented mice from developing angiogenesis of the retina—the sensory tissue at the back of the eye—using gene-editing techniques with CRISPR-Cas9.
Patients with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) who quit smoking will see their condition improve over a period of about 10 years, according to the results of a new study led by the Sinus Center at Mass. Eye and Ear.
David A. Sullivan, M.S., Ph.D., FARVO, Senior Scientist at Schepens Eye Research Institute of Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School is the recipient of the 2017 Dr. Donald R. Korb Award for Excellence, the highest honor given by the Contact Lens and Cornea Section of the American Optometric Association (AOA).
Ophthalmologists at Massachusetts Eye and Ear are now offering a new type of minimally-invasive laser vision correction, the ReLEx® SMILE procedure.
Massachusetts Eye and Ear has received an anonymous gift totaling more than $20M to accelerate research at its Eaton-Peabody Laboratories, the world’s largest and most preeminent hearing research center. This gift represents one of the country’s largest philanthropic investments ever to advance research on hearing and hearing loss, a significant public health problem impacting one-third of the world’s population over age 65.
The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) recently announced that Reza Dana, M.D, MPH, M.Sc., Director of Cornea and Refractive Surgery at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and a resident of Newton, Mass., will receive the prestigious Friedenwald Award.
Leading hospital “superbugs,” known as the enterococci, arose from an ancestor that dates back 450 million years — about the time when animals were first crawling onto land (and well before the age of dinosaurs), according to a new study.
Mass. Eye and Ear is enhancing the care it brings to adult and pediatric retina patients with a new and innovative vitreoretinal surgical platform, known as the NGENUITY 3D Visualization System.
Treating donor corneas with a cocktail of molecules prior to transplanting to a host may improve survival of grafts and, thus, outcomes in high-risk corneal transplant patients, according to a new study led by researchers at Massachusetts Eye and Ear.
A new study led by Massachusetts Eye and Ear researchers found that oral promethazine, a drug commonly taken to alleviate motion sickness, temporarily worsened vestibular perception thresholds by 31 percent, lowering one’s ability to perceive sensory information about motion, balance and spatial orientation.
Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Symphony NH have recently begun a new collaboration between the hospital and professional orchestra toward a goal of bringing medically-based music therapy programs to Mass. Eye and Ear patients.
A team led by Massachusetts Eye and Ear researchers has identified a novel therapeutic target for retinal neovascularization, or abnormal blood vessel growth in the retina, a hallmark of advanced diabetic eye disease (proliferative diabetic retinopathy). According to a report published online in Diabetes, the transcription factor RUNX1 was found in abnormal retinal blood vessels, and by inhibiting RUNX1 with a small molecule drug, the researchers achieved a 50 percent reduction of retinopathy in preclinical models.
The brains of those who are born blind make new connections in the absence of visual information, resulting in enhanced, compensatory abilities such as a heightened sense of hearing, smell and touch, as well as cognitive functions (such as memory and language) according to a new study led by Massachusetts Eye and Ear researchers.
Depressed patients with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) are more likely to miss days of work or school than those without depression symptoms, according to the results of a new study led by the Sinus Center at Massachusetts Eye and Ear.
In 2013, Mass. Eye and Ear researchers restored partial hearing to mice by regenerating hair cells — tiny, sound-sensing cells in the ear, which are lost through noise damage, age, etc., and do not regenerate on their own — by converting stem cells found in the ear into hair cells. However, the success of restoring hearing through this approach was limited by the small number of cells that could be turned into hair cells. In a new study in Cell Reports, a research team from Mass. Eye and Ear, Brigham and Women's Hospital and MIT has shown that they can augment the number of those cells, and then convert that large population into hair cells, lending hope that full hearing can be restored to those with hearing loss due to damaged hair cells.
In the summer of 2015, a team at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School reported restoring rudimentary hearing in genetically deaf mice using gene therapy. Now the Boston Children’s research team reports restoring a much higher level of hearing — down to 25 decibels, the equivalent of a whisper — using an improved gene therapy vector developed at Massachusetts Eye and Ear. The new vector and the mouse studies are described in two back-to-back papers in Nature Biotechnology (published online February 6).
Researchers from the Schepens Eye Research Institute of Massachusetts Eye and Ear have shown that a slight increase in transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β), which is present in preclinical animal models with diabetic eye disease, protects retinal blood vessels from damage that commonly occurs in the early stages of the disease (known as diabetic retinopathy). Their findings, published in the American Journal of Pathology, may lead to targeted therapeutics that delay or prevent the development of the disease in patients.
In partnership with the Bay State Council of the Blind, Massachusetts Eye and Ear today announced the launch of a comprehensive initiative to ensure that persons with visual disabilities have full and equal opportunity to the best possible care.
A clinical trial studying the use of Verapamil (a drug currently in use for cardiovascular disease and cluster headache) in alleviating chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) with nasal polyps revealed significant improvement in the symptoms of this subset of patients.
Massachusetts Eye and Ear has launched a health blog to provide stories and insight from experts in otolaryngology (ear, nose, throat, head and neck care) and ophthalmology (eye care) to those interested in the hospital’s mission and areas of expertise. The online publication, named Focus, covers a range of topics in the form of expert commentary on common conditions, profiles of medical and research trainees, research findings and patient stories.
Researchers from Schepens Eye Research Institute of Massachusetts Eye and Ear have uncovered two factors responsible for the chronic, lifelong nature of autoimmune disorders, which tend to “flare up” intermittently in affected patients. These two factors are cell-signaling proteins called cytokines—specifically Interleukin-7 and -15 (IL-7 and IL-15)—that are secreted by cells of the immune system and help modulate memory Th17 cells, a subset of T cells which are known to contribute to autoimmune disorders. Until now, it was unclear how Th17 cells maintained memory; the study results show that IL-7 and IL-15 signal the Th17 cells to chronically reside in the body.
Massachusetts Eye and Ear recently opened the Center for Thyroid Eye Disease and Orbital Surgery, a multidisciplinary initiative to address complex conditions affecting the eye sockets, including orbital tumors and thyroid eye disease.
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