Eye / Vision Problems
Dietary antioxidants cut elderly eye disease risk
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High amounts of beta-carotene, vitamins C and E, and zinc in the diet may help stave off age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of blindness in the elderly, new research suggests.
In a previous study, high-dose supplementation with these antioxidants was shown to slow the progression of AMD, but the effect of regular dietary consumption in preventing this eye disease was unclear, according to the report in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association.
Label Change for Flomax Following Report of Cataract Surgery Complications
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Who knew that the most commonly prescribed prostate drug may complicate cataract surgery in male patients? David F. Chang, MD and John R. Campbell, MD suspected this after conducting a recently published study that examined the incidence of Intraoperative Floppy Iris Syndrome (IFIS) in their cataract surgery practices.
“Flomax does not affect vision or eye health,” said Dr. Chang. “But it blocks the dilator muscle in the iris, and during cataract surgery, the pupil needs to be dilated.”
Ants eat away woman’s eye in hospital
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A woman receiving treatment for diabetes at a state-run hospital in eastern India lost one of her eyes after ants nibbled away at it, officials said on Tuesday.
The patient recovering from a post-surgery infection shrieked for help as the ants attacked her on Sunday night, but nurses told her it was normal to feel pain from the infection.
Chlamydia pneumoniae may cause vision problems
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Researchers at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI) have found that Chlamydia pneumoniae, a bacterium linked to heart disease and capable of causing chronic inflammation, was present in the diseased eye tissue of five out of nine people with neovascular, or “wet,” age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
However, it was not found in the eyes of more than 20 individuals without AMD, providing more evidence that this disease may be caused by inflammation.
Benefits of cataract surgery last in most patients
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Visual function after cataract surgery may decrease over time in some patients, but many still show improvement years after surgery, Swedish researchers report in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.
Drs. Mats Lunstrom and E. Wendel, from Blekinge Hospital, Sweden, examined how long patients’ improved visual function lasts following a cataract surgery.
Antibiotics usually not needed for pink eye
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For most kids with pink eye, also known as acute infective conjunctivitis, the condition will usually resolve on its own, without antibiotic treatment, results of a UK study suggest.
Pink eye often results from a bacterial infection and standard clinical practice is the prescription of antibiotic eyedrops or ointments, Dr. Peter Rose of the University of Oxford and colleagues explain in The Lancet. Previous studies showing that antibiotics were the best treatment for pink eye largely involved patients with severe forms of the disease.
Green laser pointers can damage eyes
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A woman damaged her eye after spending only seconds looking directly at a green laser pointer, suggesting that these lasers can be more dangerous in green than in red, experts say.
After the woman looked directly at the green laser for different periods of time, including as little as 60 seconds, researchers saw that portions of her retina had changed color, a sign of damage. The woman never experienced any loss of vision, and by 3 weeks, the damage was healing.
The lead author suggested that if the woman had spent longer looking at the laser, her eyesight might have suffered as a result.
Sirna drug helps vision in blindness-risk patients
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Sirna Therapeutics Inc. on Tuesday said its experimental drug to treat the leading cause of Blindness improved vision in almost half of patients in a small, early-stage trial, without causing any drug-related side effects.
The phase I trial results for the company’s lead experimental drug, Sirna-027, are the first human clinical data ever presented for a medicine that employs a technology called RNA interference. Such drugs are designed to prevent disease-causing genes from making their designated proteins.
Dr. Roberto Guerciolini, chief medical officer of the tiny San Francisco-based biotechnology company, said the phase I data involved 14 patients with the Blindness-causing “wet” form of age-related macular degeneration.
