Eye Health News and Research

Latest Eye Health News and Research

Researchers find that human eyes learn best in an uncluttered setting

If athletes, soldiers and drivers must perform every day in visually messy environments, common sense suggests that any visual training they receive should include distractions and disorder.

30 Mar 2005

CDC experts sent to Angola to help with Marburg epidemic

In an effort to control the Marburg virus outbreak in Angola, Health officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta will assist the World Health Organization by going to Angola to help with outbreak investigation, infection control and laboratory diagnosis of the disease.

30 Mar 2005

Solving sleep problems helps epileptic children

Sleeping woes may explain why children with epilepsy are often so hyperactive, say researchers with the University of Florida's Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute.

30 Mar 2005

Avoiding risks of skin cancer from ultraviolet radiation (UVR)

Cancer Research UK has launched the SunSmart Campaign for 2005 and NRPB strongly supports the health promotion messages in the campaign.

30 Mar 2005

Invisible influences reveal unconscious pathways used in visual perception

Our conscious awareness is underpinned by activity in our brain, but there is far more going on in our brain at any one time than we can possibly be aware of. So what aspects of our brain's activity are we actually aware of?

28 Mar 2005

Fish is brain food

Researchers with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) found that a diet high in docosahexenoic acid, or DHA--an omega-3 fatty acid found in relatively high concentrations in cold-water fish--dramatically slowed the progression of Alzheimer's disease in mice.

28 Mar 2005

Promising results reported for HIV patients suffering from facial wasting

Physicians from leading plastic surgery and dermatology practices report positive results from HIV patients participating in a clinical trial of Radiesse synthetic injectable implant on facial wasting. The trial is intended to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of this widely used tissue augmentation therapy as a treatment for the facial changes that socially stigmatize many HIV-infected patients.

23 Mar 2005

Vernier testing could be a substitute for the traditional Snellen eye chart test

Infant vernier acuity is not as immature as previous research has indicated according to a study published in March in the Journal of Vision, an online, free access publication of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO).

22 Mar 2005

Preventing eye disease in retinitis pigmentosa

Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is an inherited eye disease that causes visual disability leading to blindness. Over the last 15 years, researchers have pinpointed defects in dozens of genes causing different forms of RP.

22 Mar 2005

Novel method of testing exhaled breath to detect infection

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University are developing a novel method of testing exhaled breath to detect infection rapidly after potential exposure to a biological warfare agent. They report their findings today at the 2005 ASM Biodefense Research Meeting.

22 Mar 2005

Sleeping in contact lenses can lead to an increased risk of severe eye infection

The University of Manchester study found that wearers who failed to remove their lenses before bedtime had an increased risk of developing keratitis than those who routinely took out their lenses before going to sleep.

22 Mar 2005

Depression appears to be a major cause of insomnia in people with HIV

Patients in the last stages of HIV infection with full-blown AIDS and those who have suffered some kind of brain impairment as a result of the disease are also more likely to suffer from insomnia, the reviewers conclude in the current issue of Psychosomatic Medicine.

22 Mar 2005

New contact lenses cause less infections

Sleeping with your contact lenses in can give you a nasty eye infection (keratitis), but now a new generation of silicone hydrogel lenses cuts that risk fivefold, according to research in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.

21 Mar 2005

New information on TB available online

A range of new information on TB including top facts and a handy Q&A will be available at the click of a button when it goes live on www.immunisation.nhs.uk tomorrow - ahead of World Stop TB Day.

21 Mar 2005

Compound found in broccoli is a powerful disease fighter

More than 300 scientific studies point to an antioxidant found in broccoli sprouts, sulforaphane glucosinolate (SGS), as a factor in preventing multiple diseases, including several types of cancer, high blood pressure, macular degeneration and stomach ulcers.

21 Mar 2005

Genes play a substantial role in the development of age-related macular degeneration

Genes play a substantial role in the development of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), one of the leading causes of irreversible blindness among older individuals, according to an article in the March issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

14 Mar 2005

Study indicates need for new standards and training for cornea transplants

Improving the training and standardizing the procedures used by the nation's eye banks to assess corneal cells may help to select corneas with optimal health for transplantation, according to new study led by Jonathan H. Lass, MD, principal investigator of the study and chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology at University Hospitals of Cleveland and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

14 Mar 2005

High-dose radiation and bone marrow transfer treatments on glaucoma-susceptible mice completely blocked development of glaucoma

In a discovery that could point to new treatments for a wide range of neurodegenerative diseases, Jackson Laboratory researchers have found that high-dose radiation and bone marrow transfer treatments on glaucoma-susceptible mice completely blocked the development of glaucoma, by preventing neurodegeneration.

14 Mar 2005

Gene identified that confers susceptibility to age-related macular degeneration

By combining the tools of high-throughput biology and statistical genetics, scientists at Rockefeller University, Yale University School of Public Health and the National Eye Institute have identified a gene that confers susceptibility to age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the most common cause of vision loss in the United Sates for those over 60.

14 Mar 2005