Associations between neonatal nutrition and visual outcomes in 7-year-old children born very preterm.

Purpose: There is uncertainty about the effect of increased neonatal protein intake on neurodevelopmental outcomes following preterm birth. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of a change in neonatal nutrition protocol at a major tertiary neonatal intensive care unit intended to increase protein intake on ophthalmic and visual development in school-age children born very preterm.

Methods: The study cohort comprised children (n = 128) with birthweight <1500 g or gestational age < 30 weeks born at Auckland City Hospital before (OldPro group, n = 55) and after (NewPro group, n = 73) a reformulation of parenteral nutrition that resulted in increased total protein intake during the first postnatal week and decreased carbohydrate, total parenteral fluid and sodium intake.

Age-matched analysis of axial length growth in myopic children wearing defocus incorporated multiple segments spectacle lenses.

Background/aims: Defocus incorporated multiple segments (DIMS) spectacle lenses are known to be able to inhibit axial length (AL) growth in myopic children compared with single vision (SV) spectacle lenses. However, it is not known whether AL growth is sufficiently inhibited to achieve the treatment goal of physiological AL growth.

Methods: Of the data already collected in 2014-2017 by Lam , the AL growth with DIMS and SV spectacle lenses was re-evaluated according to the age-matched myopia control system.

A Rapid Screening Platform for Simultaneous Evaluation of Biodegradation and Therapeutic Release of an Ocular Hydrogel.

This study attempts to address the challenge of accurately measuring the degradation of biodegradable hydrogels, which are frequently employed in drug delivery for controlled and sustained release. The traditional method utilizes a mass-loss approach, which is cumbersome and time consuming. The aim of this study was to develop an innovative screening platform using a millifluidic device coupled with automated image analysis to measure the degradation of Gelatin methacrylate (GelMA) and the subsequent release of an entrapped wetting agent, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA).

Oral supplementation of Gordonibacter urolithinfaciens promotes ellagic acid metabolism and urolithin bioavailability in mice.

Ellagic acid (EA) is an abundant dietary polyphenol with multifarious health benefits but low bioavailability. To increase its bio-efficacy, converting EA to urolithins by supplementing urolithin-producing bacteria, e.g.

A review of using Traditional Chinese Medicine in the management of glaucoma and cataract.

Traditional Chinese Medicine has a long history in ophthalmology in China. Over 250 kinds of Traditional Chinese Medicine have been recorded in ancient books for the management of eye diseases, which may provide an alternative or supplement to current ocular therapies. However, the core holistic philosophy of Traditional Chinese Medicine that makes it attractive can also hinder its understanding from a scientific perspective - in particular, determining true cause and effect.

Healthy dietary patterns and the risk of individual chronic diseases in community-dwelling adults.

It is unclear regarding associations of dietary patterns with a wide range of chronic diseases and which dietary score is more predictive of major chronic diseases. Using the UK Biobank, we examine associations of four individual healthy dietary scores with the risk of 48 individual chronic diseases. Higher Alternate Mediterranean Diet score is associated with a lower risk of 32 (all 8 cardiometabolic disorders, 3 out of 10 types of cancers, 7 out of 10 psychological/neurological disorders, 5 out of 6 digestive disorders, and 9 out of 14 other chronic diseases).

One-shot Retinal Artery and Vein Segmentation via Cross-modality Pretraining.

Purpose: To perform one-shot retinal artery and vein segmentation with cross-modality artery-vein (AV) soft-label pretraining.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Subjects: The study included 6479 color fundus photography (CFP) and arterial-venous fundus fluorescein angiography (FFA) pairs from 1964 participants for pretraining and 6 AV segmentation data sets with various image sources, including RITE, HRF, LES-AV, AV-WIDE, PortableAV, and DRSplusAV for one-shot finetuning and testing.

YouTube as a learning source for contact lens insertion and removal.

Clinical Relevance: Contact lens neophytes often learn about contact lens insertion and removal through YouTube videos of unknown quality.

Background: This study evaluates the quality of soft contact lens insertion and removal videos on YouTube.

Methods: A search for the keywords 'Contact lens insertion', 'Contact lens removal', 'Put in contact lens', and 'Take off contact lens' was performed on YouTube.

The temporal dynamics of visual crowding in letter recognition: Modulating crowding with alternating flicker presentations.

Visual crowding reduces the visibility of a peripherally presented group of stimuli. This is especially challenging for peripheral reading because adjacent letters or characters perceptually crowd one another. We investigated the temporal course of spatial visual crowding by sequentially alternating the visibility of the target and flanking letters within a trigram letter stimulus presented 9° below fixation.

Defocus incorporated multiple segments (DIMS) spectacle lenses increase the choroidal thickness: a two-year randomized clinical trial.

Background: Myopia control interventions, such as defocus incorporated multiple segments (DIMS) spectacle lenses, have been adopted in school-aged children to reduce the prevalence of myopia and its complications. This study aimed to investigate the effect of DIMS spectacle lenses on subfoveal choroidal thickness (SfChT) over a period of two years, as the choroidal response to myopic control is a crucial factor in exploring its potential effect on predicting myopia progression.

Methods: This study involved a secondary analysis of our previous randomized clinical trial.

Upregulation of EphA2 is associated with apoptosis in response to HO and UV radiation-induced cataracts.

In this article, we examine the role of erythropoietin-producing hepatocellular receptor A2 (EphA2) in the apoptosis of lens epithelial cells (LECs) in HO and UV radiation-induced cataracts. We treated SRA01/04 cells with HO or ultraviolet (UV) radiation to create a cataract cell model. We constructed a cataract lens model by exposing mice to UV radiation.

Establishing Functional Retina in a Dish: Progress and Promises of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Based Retinal Neuron Differentiation.

The human eye plays a critical role in vision perception, but various retinal degenerative diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa (RP), glaucoma, and age-related macular degeneration (AMD) can lead to vision loss or blindness. Although progress has been made in understanding retinal development and in clinical research, current treatments remain inadequate for curing or reversing these degenerative conditions. Animal models have limited relevance to humans, and obtaining human eye tissue samples is challenging due to ethical and legal considerations.

Medical visual question answering: A survey.

Medical Visual Question Answering (VQA) is a combination of medical artificial intelligence and popular VQA challenges. Given a medical image and a clinically relevant question in natural language, the medical VQA system is expected to predict a plausible and convincing answer. Although the general-domain VQA has been extensively studied, the medical VQA still needs specific investigation and exploration due to its task features.

Longitudinal Changes in Axial Length and Spherical Equivalent in Children and Adolescents With High Myopia.

Purpose: To investigate longitudinal changes in axial length (AL) and spherical equivalent (SE) in children and adolescents with high myopia and to explore associated risk factors.

Methods: This was a longitudinal, observational cohort study of highly myopic participants (aged 7-17 years) to evaluate the mean rates of change in AL and SE. Mixed effects regression models were used to explore the risk factors.

Brief Adaptation to Astigmatism Reduces Meridional Anisotropy in Contrast Sensitivity.

Purpose: To investigate the effect of visual adaptation to orientation-dependent optical blur on meridional contrast sensitivity function in artificially imposed astigmatism.

Methods: The study adopted a top-up adapt-test paradigm. During the blur adaptation process, the 18 non-astigmatic young adult participants were briefly presented with natural scene images (first trial, 10 minutes; subsequent trials, 6 seconds).

Functional and structural changes in the neuroretina are accompanied by mitochondrial dysfunction in a type 2 diabetic mouse model.

Background: Diabetic retinopathy (DR), one of the leading causes of blindness and vision impairment, is suggested to exhibit functional and structural changes in retinal neurons as the earliest manifestation, which could be used to predict the progression of related angiopathy. While neural function and survival rely on proper mitochondrial function, and a growing body of literature has supported the role of mitochondrial dysfunction in the development of DR, how diabetes affects mitochondrial function in retinal tissue remains elusive. This study primarily aimed to investigate mitochondrial functional changes in a diabetic rodent model.

An insight on ophthalmic drug delivery systems: Focus on polymeric biomaterials-based carriers.

Presently, different types of eye diseases, such as glaucoma, myopia, infection, and dry eyes are treated with topical eye drops. However, due to ocular surface barriers, eye drops require multiple administrations, which may cause several risks, thereby necessitating additional strategies. Some of the key characteristics of an ideal ocular drug delivery system are as follows: (a) good penetration into cornea, (b) high drug retention in the ocular tissues, (c) targetability to the desired regions of the eye, and (d) good bioavailability.

Micro array patch assisted transdermal delivery of high dose, ibuprofen sodium using thermoresponsive sodium alginate/poly (vinylcaprolactam) in situ gels depot.

Current study reports the combined technique of microneedle array patches and thermoresponsive gels. Microneedles array patch mediated insitu skin depots were evaluated for sustain drug delivery using sodium alginate/Poly (vinylcaprolactam) thermoresponsive gels. Their phase transition property from sol-gel state was monitored with AR2000 rheometer.

Retinal ganglion cells encode differently in the myopic mouse retina?

The etiology of myopia remains unclear. This study investigated whether retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) in the myopic retina encode visual information differently from the normal retina and to determine the role of Connexin (Cx) 36 in this process. Generalized linear models (GLMs), which can capture stimulus-dependent changes in real neurons with spike timing precision and reliability, were used to predict RGCs responses to focused and defocused images in the retinas of wild-type (normal) and Lens-Induced Myopia (LIM) mice.

Differential Responses of Retinal Neurons and Glia Revealed via Proteomic Analysis on Primary and Secondary Retinal Ganglion Cell Degeneration.

To explore the temporal profile of retinal proteomes specific to primary and secondary retinal ganglion cell (RGC) loss. Unilateral partial optic nerve transection (pONT) was performed on the temporal side of the rat optic nerve. Temporal and nasal retinal samples were collected at 1, 4 and 8 weeks after pONT (n = 4 each) for non-biased profiling with a high-resolution hybrid quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry running on label-free SWATH acquisition (SCIEX).

Long-Term Effects on Retinal Structure and Function in a Mouse Endothelin-1 Model of Retinal Ganglion Cell Degeneration.

Purpose: To study the long-term effects of endothelin-1 (ET-1)-induced retinal pathologies in mouse, using clinically relevant tools.

Methods: Adult C57BL/6 mice (7-9 weeks old) were intravitreally injected with PBS (n = 10) or 0.25 (n = 8), 0.

Structured light enhanced entoptic stimuli for vision science applications.

The dichroic macular pigment in the Henle fiber layer in the fovea enables humans to perceive entoptic phenomena when viewing polarized blue light. In the standard case of linearly polarized stimuli, a faint bowtie-like pattern known as the Haidinger's brush appears in the central point of fixation. As the shape and clarity of the perceived signal is directly related to the health of the macula, Haidinger's brush has been used as a diagnostic marker in studies of early stage macular degeneration and central field visual dysfunction.

Performance of neuroretinal rim thickness measurement by Cirrus high-definition optical coherence tomography in myopic eyes.

Neuroretinal rim (NRR) measurement can aid the diagnosis of glaucoma. A few studies reported that Cirrus optical coherence tomography (OCT) had NRR segmentation errors. The current study investigated segmentation success of NRR in myopic eyes using the Cirrus built-in software and to determine the number of acquisitions required to identify NRR thinning.

Size at birth predicts later brain volumes.

We aimed to investigate whether gestation at birth, birth weight, and head circumference at birth are still associated with brain volume and white matter microstructure at 9-10 years in children born late-preterm and at term. One hundred and eleven children born at ≥ 36 weeks gestation from the CHYLD Study cohort underwent brain magnetic resonance imaging at 9 to 10 years. Images were analysed using FreeSurfer for volumetric data and tract-based spatial statistics for diffusion data.