Pittsburgh University researchers have succeeded in transforming stem cells from wisdom teeth into corneal cells in mice. These cells could be used to repair corneal scarring and offer a potential future treatment for corneal blindness, a condition affecting millions worldwide.

Corneal blindness is typically treated with transplants but rejection of donor tissue and a shortage of donor corneas present potential issues. “Our work is promising, because they use the patient’s own cells for the treatment, which reduces the risk of encountering these problems,” says Fatima Syed-Picard, who led the study.

Dental pulp stem cells may also be used to regrow other tissues such as nerves and bone in future regenerative therapies.

Further information: http://www.upmc.com/media/NewsReleases/2015/Pages/wisdom-teeth-stem-cells-corneal.aspx

A research team at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona has developed a new iPad application that can screen for visual contrast loss in Parkinson’s patients.

Patients with Parkinson’s disease may experience a number of eye problems either as a symptom of the disease itself or as a side effect of medication. These problems include blurred vision, dry eyes, involuntary closure of the eyelids (blepharospasms) and loss of contrast and colour sensitivity.

Because patients with Parkinson’s disease often have normal high-contrast vision, a reduction in low-contrast visual acuity is often missed by routine eye exams. An iPad version of a variable-contrast acuity chart was shown to the patients at close (40 cm) and far (2 m) distances. Parkinson’s patients had significantly worse vision for the low-contrast images at both distances than control subjects.

The degree of a patient’s low-contrast visual deficiency correlates to the severity of Parkinson’s disease, which suggests that these visual tests could serve as a method for diagnosing Parkinson’s and measuring the effectiveness of treatments.

Further information: http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=150140&CultureCode=en