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Eye News Roundup – July Week 4

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Eye News Roundup – July Week 4

1: A New Device Ready to Ease Dry Eye Patients by Activating Real Tears

Yes, there’s a device out there that can ease you with your ‘Dry Eye’ condition, all by helping you produce real tears, according to MedScape.

The device achieves this feat by stimulating your body’s very own lacrimal system to produce real tears, as revealed by Dr Beeran Meghpara of Wills Eye Hospital Philadelphia and Christopher J. Rapuano, MD, chief of the cornea service at Wills Eye Hospital.

According to them, this new device stimulates your lacrimal system by performing transnasal neurostimulation to produce tears naturally, without requiring any external drops or medication.

Since this is a new device, people who can use it still remain to be figured out completely. However, it can be safely said that people suffering from mild dry eye, those who are already using artificial tears, can use this device, which will help them get rid of assistance of any kind of external drops. More importantly, you can also use the device in conjunction with any other prescribed treatments for dry eyes.

There are also patients who are advised not to use a device capable of sending electrical signals, such as patients using pacemakers and defibrillators. Similarly, people with cochlear implants should avoid using this device as well.

Using this device involves placing it inside your nostrils with about 5% probability of nosebleeds, though these are supposed to be minor generally. So, people already suffering from some kind of nose bleeding issues shall refrain from using this device.

What adds to the authenticity and efficacy of the device is that FDA has approved it and people have reportedly given positive feedback about it.

Interested in knowing more about the device? Move on to MedScape and learn more about it.

2: Turmeric-based Eye Drops for Glaucoma Treatment, More Fact than Fiction

According to a recently carried out study under the supervision of UCL and Imperial College London researchers, a derivative of turmeric might be used to produce eye drops capable of treating people suffering from early-stage glaucoma.

According to the “Scientific Reports” paper, the researchers used curcumin, a component extracted from turmeric, a commonly used yellow colored spice, transporting it directly to the back of the eye in form of eye drops, thus overcoming the curcumin’s poor solubility issue.

The research team reported reduction in loss of retinal cells in rats (which is considered as an early sign of glaucoma) after using curcumin based eye drops.

The researchers also claimed to be exploring these eye drops as a diagnostic tool for a host of conditions involving eyes and brains, ranging from glaucoma to Alzheimer’s disease. Success in administering curcumin in the form of eye drops is believed to be significantly helpful for millions of people suffering from such eye diseases across the globe.

Retinal ganglion cells, neurons in nature, are found near the surface of retina and glaucoma is known to cause the loss of these cells. Finding a way to stop the loss of retinal ganglion cells early on completely, still remains a challenge for researchers and curcumin’s potential to stop this loss of cells (when taken orally) is already known.

Owed to the poor solubility of curcumin, scientists have remained far from exploiting its true potential of fighting the loss of retinal ganglion cells so far. But this study has helped researchers develop a nanocarrier based approach to deliver much higher loads of curcumin directly to the back of the eye, raising its solubility by a factor of about 400,000.

More of this interesting story can be found on ScienceDaily.

3: Children with Dyslexia Might be Susceptible to More Visual Function Problems

According to a study published recently in JAMA Ophthalmology, children suffering from Developmental Dyslexia (DD) are more prone to visual deficits compared to children their age with no instances of DD.

Spearheaded by Dr. Aparna Raghuram of Boston Children’s Hospital, at least one domain of visual function in nearly 80% of children affected with DD was observed, compared to only one third found in the control group involved in the study.

According to her, the findings cannot be deemed reliable enough to endorse eye exercises for dyslexia treatment, as much more research is needed to explore any further possibilities. However, the study can be considered as the next step in determining the frequency of deficits.

4: Retinal Break Repair and Macular Hole Closure by Means of a Biocompatible Film

Whether it’s about retinal break repair or macular hole closure, resolving interruption of retinal tissue becomes a whole lot easier, thanks to a novel technique involving bio-compatible film.

This new biocompatible film based technique comes forth as a result of efforts put in by a group of researchers led by Stanislao Rizzo, MD, as reported by “Healio”.

Rizzo’s team reports of successful treatment of a group of 19 people, 7 of them suffering from retinal detachment, while 12 of them having persistent macular hole. They underwent plana vitrectomy and implantation of the biocompatible film to repair macular hole or retinal break.

In fact, this is the first time that interruption of the retinal tissue has been successfully resolved using a regenerative process, as per details shared by Rizzo at the American Society of Retina Specialists (ASRS) annual meeting.

As against most surgical techniques, this treatment was able to produce quite encouraging results for everyone in safest and simplest manner.

For further details on this latest technique, visit Healio.

5: What About an Orange a Day to Cope with AMD Risk?

You must be familiar with age-old adage, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”, but most of you cannot claim of being very familiar with something like, “an orange a day can keep AMD away”.

Well, an Australia based researcher Bamini Gopinath, PhD, along with his colleagues from the Center for Vision Research, Department of Ophthalmology and Westmead Institute for Medical Research report the possibility of such an occurrence in a study published in the “American Journal of Clinical Nutrition”.

The results were concluded on the basis of a study involving people consuming at least a single orange every day, found to be with 60% lower risk of developing AMD or Age-related Macular Degeneration in comparison with those not consuming oranges.

MedScape has more of this interesting story for you to follow.

2021-12-06T11:31:18+00:00

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