Vision

Exfoliation syndrome (XFS) is an eye condition that is a leading cause of secondary open-angle glaucoma and can lead to an increased risk of cataract and cataract surgery complications.  Despite improvements in understanding the cause of this common yet life-altering condition, there are a lot of unknowns, like what factors are most likely to cause it. What are some of those factors? Residential geography, time spent in the sun, and whether or not sunglasses are worn, according to a study published in JAMA Ophthalmology. "The discovery that common genetic variants in the lysyl oxidase-…

People with more yellow pigment in their eye may be better able to see distant objects in hazy conditions, according to a new paper in Optometry and Vision Science. Increased macular pigment (MP) may help in filtering out "blue haze," thus making distant objects more visible, according to an experimental study by Laura M. Fletcher, MS, and colleagues of University of Georgia, Athens. "The results suggest that people with high levels of yellow macular pigment may have some slight advantage in hazy and glare conditions," comments Anthony Adams, OD, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of Optometry and…

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is so commonly diagnosed – and overdiagnosed, and misdiagnosed – that it is hard to know what is based on evidence and what is based on teachers and concerned parents reacting to children that don't like to sit around and do nothing. Actual clinical ADHD used to be rare but now it is a common problem of "pill culture" in psychiatry and the most common behavioral disorder label given to children in America, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Without reliable physiological markers to diagnose ADHD, it is just symptom-…

Understanding eye diseases is tricky enough but knowing what causes them at the molecular level will help. University of Iowa researchers have created the most detailed map to date of a region of the human eye long associated with blinding diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration. The high-resolution molecular map catalogs thousands of proteins in the choroid, which supplies blood and oxygen to the outer retina, itself critical in vision. By seeing differences in the abundance of proteins in different areas of the choroid, the researchers can begin to figure out which proteins may…

For older people, and farsighted people, watching television while also reading this article can be challenging experiences because the eyes do not adjust. So people wear glasses down on their nose to read while they watch something farther away. It's the 21st century, The Future of Back To The Future is a year away, it's time to ditch spectacles and make the computer screens wear the glasses instead of people. University of California, Berkeley researchers are developing computer algorithms to compensate for an individual's visual impairment, and creating vision-correcting displays that…

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the most common cause of visual impairment and blindness in industrialized countries but it is questionable whether it can continue to be defined as a disease in people in their 50s and beyond. Investigations to determine the incidence of age-related macular degeneration undertaken as part of the Gutenberg Health Study of the University Medical Center of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have shown that even persons under the age of 50 years may be affected by an early form of the eye disease. Just under 4 percent of the 35 to 44-year-old…

Is there a biomarker that can spot a player versus a potential soul mate?  University of Chicago psychologists say that if it is so, the difference between love and lust might be in the eyes - specifically, where your date looks at you could indicate whether love or lust is in the cards. Their work found that eye patterns concentrate on a stranger's face if the viewer sees that person as a potential partner in romantic love, but the viewer gazes more at the other person's body if he or she is feeling sexual desire. That automatic judgment can occur in as little as half a second,…

An international research project has reported that a new oral medication is showing significant progress in restoring vision to patients with Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA). This inherited retinal disease that causes visual impairment ranging from reduced vision to complete blindness, has remained untreatable.   "This is the first time that an oral drug has improved the visual function of blind patients with LCA," says the study's lead author, Dr. Robert Koenekoop, who is director of the McGill Ocular Genetics Laboratory at The Montreal Children's Hospital of the MUHC, and a…

About 450,000 (12 percent) of the 3.9 million babies born each year in the United States are premature. Thanks to modern medicine, the number of preterm infants who survive has also surged in middle income countries in Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe.  In these parts of the world, rates of childhood blindness from retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) are estimated at 15 to 30 percent—compared to 13 percent in the United States. Some degree of  retinopathy of prematurity appears in more than half of all infants born at 30 weeks pregnancy or younger—a full-term pregnancy is 40…

A new study has found that the eye's optical quality deteriorates after alcohol consumption. Not just how the images are interpreted, the way some unemployed guy who is 'getting his band together' looks more attractive at 2 AM after a few shots of Jägermeister, but the physical eye itself. The authors say ethanol in the tear-film is one of the causes: it covers the surface of the eye, disturbs the outer layer and favors evaporation of the aqueous content of the tear, deteriorating the optical quality of the image we see. The deterioration in vision is significantly greater in subjects…