A simple eye test in first grade could predict the onset of myopia years in advance.

When American researchers conducted a study with 4,500 children aged 6 to 11, they found that 414 of them became myopic (nearsighted) between the ages of 7 and 13. Among the 13 risk factors in the study, the Ohio researchers found that the strongest single predictor of myopia was refractive error.

Children who grow up with normal vision are slightly farsighted at around 6 or 7 years old. However, those who become myopic by their early teens show no refractive error when they are around 6 or 7.

Taking such a test at this age could predict the onset on myopia a few years later, allowing parents to plan for eye testing schedules and glasses. It would also open up research avenues into therapies that could prevent the need for glasses altogether.

To learn more: http://archopht.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2206339

According to psychologists at the University of California, Riverside, just one week of training by repeatedly performing a perceptual-learning task can improve the vision of the elderly to be comparable to young adults.

“Our research indicates that the visual system of the elderly retains a high degree of plasticity and demonstrates that training methods can be used to improve visual function,” says John G. Andersen, who co-authored the study.

Subjects were shown a striped visual stimulus and asked to determine if the image had been rotated clockwise or counter-clockwise. Researchers compared the results of 16 young adults (average age of 22) and 16 older adults (average age of 71) in 750 trials a day over a seven day period. After seven days the older adults showed enough improvement in near-vision acuity to eliminate the difference between the two groups.

It is not yet known if the effects of visual training lead to improvement in real-world tasks, such as driving.

Further information: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/boosting-older-adults-vision-through-training.html

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