Lower Blood Sugar Less Retinopathy

People with type 2 diabetes who intensively controlled their blood sugar level during the landmark Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes (ACCORD) Trial Eye Study were found to have cut their risk of diabetic retinopathy in half in a follow-up analysis conducted four years after stopping intensive therapy. Investigators who led the ACCORD Follow-on Eye Study (ACCORDION) announced the results today in New Orleans at the American Diabetes Association annual meeting. The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Eye Institute (NEI).

Using Fish and Insects to Design Contact Lenses

Contact lens designed for presbyopia

"Making the most of the low light in the muddy rivers where it swims, the elephant nose fish survives by being able to spot predators amongst the muck with a uniquely shaped retina, the part of the eye that captures light. In a new study, researchers looked to the fish’s retinal structure to inform the design of a contact lens that can adjust its focus," reports the National Institutes of Health (NIH). "Imagine a contact lens that autofocuses within milliseconds. That could be life-changing for people with presbyopia, a stiffening of the eye’s lens that makes it difficult to focus on close objects. Presbyopia affects more than 1 billion people worldwide, half of whom do not have adequate correction, said the project’s leader, Hongrui Jiang, Ph.D., of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. And while glasses, conventional contact lenses and surgery provide some improvement, these options all involve the loss of contrast and sensitivity, as well as difficulty with night vision. Jiang’s idea is to design contacts that continuously adjust in concert with one’s own cornea and lens to recapture a person’s youthful vision." Read more.

NEI Funding Robotics for Visually Impaired

As part of the National Robotics Initiative (NRI), the National Institutes of Health announced that it will fund the development of three innovative co-robots—robots that work cooperatively with people. One of these will be a hand-worn device to help visually impaired people identify and grasp objects. Read more.

Expensive Eylea Outperforms Avaastin and Lucentis, says NEI

In an NIH-supported clinical trial comparing three drugs for diabetic macular edema (DME), Eylea (aflibercept) provided greater visual improvement, on average, than did Avastin (bevacizumab) or Lucentis (ranibizumab) when vision was 20/50 or worse at the start of the trial. However, the three drugs resulted in similar average improvement when starting vision was 20/40 to 20/32. Investigators found no major differences in the safety of the three drugs. The trial was funded by the National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health. Read more on the NIH site.

Treating AMD-Related Depression

A multi-disciplinary rehabilitation therapy can cut the risk of AMD-related depression in half, says a new study funded by the National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The findings were published in Ophthalmology. The trial recruited 188 participants with bilateral AMD from an ophthalmology practice affiliated with Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia. They averaged 84 years, 70 percent were women, and half percent lived alone. Their best corrected vision was no better than 20/70. Participants manifested mild depressive symptoms and were at risk for developing clinical depression. Read more about the trial at NEI. The findings were published in Ophthalmology.

Can Soft Bifocal CLs Slow Children's Myopia? NEI Study Looks to Find Out

"The University of Houston (UH) is part of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) study to determine whether commercially available, soft bifocal contact lenses slow the progression of nearsightedness in children," writes Your Houston News. "Investigators at UH and The Ohio State University (OSU) Colleges of Optometry were awarded grants from the NIH’s National Eye Institute, worth approximately $7.5 million over five years. The Bifocal Lenses In Nearsighted Kids (BLINK) Study is a multicenter randomized clinical trial that will follow nearly 300 children over the course of three years. Dr. David A. Berntsen, an assistant professor in the UH College of Optometry, is the principal investigator for the UH clinical site of this collaborative effort. Children 7 to 11 years old will be enrolled and randomly assigned to wear soft contact lenses with no reading power, soft contact lenses with medium reading power or soft contact lenses with high reading power. The investigators will measure the length of the eye and the amount of nearsightedness to determine whether light focused by the reading power of the soft bifocal contact lenses in front of the retina will result in slower eye growth and, thus, slower progression of nearsightedness." Read more.

Development Has Implication for Treatment of Amblyopia

“A study in mice reveals an elegant circuit within the developing visual system that helps dictate how the eyes connect to the brain,” reports Science Daily. “The research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, has implications for treating amblyopia, a vision disorder that occurs when the brain ignores one eye in favor of the other.” Read more.

NIH Grant for Hand-Held Vision Scanner

"A pen-sized eye scanner could improve access to vision-related health care in the US and around the world, thanks to a grant issued by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to Lumetrics," according to Photonics. "The medical technology company received $973,000 from the NIH’s National Eye Institute to develop the handheld digital instrument for retina inspection....The camera’s development was led by Dr. Fillip Ignatovich, Lumetric’s chief technology officer, and Dr. David Kleinman, an academic retinal specialist at the Flaum Eye Institute, also in Rochester. It was made possible through a patent invented by Dr. Steven Feldon, director of the Flaum Eye Institute, and Dr. Geunyoung Yoon of the University of Rochester." Read more.

NEI Issuing Awards for Ideas that Advance Vision Science

The National Eye Institute (NEI), a part of the National Institutes of Health, is offering $3,000 awards to as many as 20 contestants who submit the most compelling one-page ideas to advance vision science. The submission deadline for the Challenge to Identify Audacious Goals in Vision Research and Blindness Rehabilitation is Nov. 12, 2012. Winning contestants will be invited to present, discuss, and refine their ideas at the NEI Audacious Goals Development Meeting, Feb. 24-26, 2013, in Washington D.C.Read more.

NEI Weighs In on the Avastin-Lucentis Debate

At two years, Avastin (bevacizumab) and Lucentis (ranibizumab injection), two widely used drugs to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD), improve vision when administered monthly or on an as needed basis, although greater improvements in vision were seen with monthly administration for this common, debilitating eye disease, according to researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health.

NIH Study Shows 34% of School Children with Visual Problems

"About 4 percent of preschoolers have myopia (nearsightedness), 21 percent have hyperopia (farsightedness), and 10 percent have astigmatism (irregular curvature of the eye), according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health," says a National Eye Institute's webpage. "The largest of its kind, the study identified related risk factors, including age, ethnicity, exposure to smoking, and access to health insurance. Uncorrected refractive errors, such as myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism are the most common causes of vision impairment in children. Caused by slight irregularities in eye shape, refractive errors affect how light focuses on the retina, the part of the eye that converts light into signals the brain perceives as images. Refractive errors are correctible with eyeglasses, but uncorrected they can lead to lasting vision problems such as strabismus (misalignment of the eyes) and amblyopia (decreased vision in one or both eyes that cannot be corrected with eyeglasses)." Read more.