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NEI Research News

Thanks to the work of NEI scientists and grantees, we’re constantly learning new information about the causes and treatment of vision disorders. Get the latest updates about their work — along with other news about NEI.

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Grantee News

LSU Health New Orleans Makes Discovery Key to Preventing Blindness and Stroke Devastation

Researchers at the Louisiana State University Neuroscience Center of Excellence have discovered gene interactions that determine whether cells live or die in such conditions as age-related macular degeneration and ischemic stroke.
Grantee News

Results challenge conventional wisdom about where the brain begins processing visual information

Using high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a team of researchers from Vanderbilt and Boston universities, have discovered that more complex processing occurs in the initial stages of the visual system than previously thought.
Grantee News

​Stem Cells from Wisdom Teeth Can Be Transformed into Corneal Cells

Stem cells from the dental pulp of wisdom teeth can be coaxed to turn into cells of the eye’s cornea and could one day be used to repair corneal scarring due to infection or injury.
Illustration showing the retina as seen through a dilated pupil.

Eylea outperforms other drugs for diabetic macular edema with moderate or worse vision loss

In an NIH-supported clinical trial comparing three drugs for diabetic macular edema (DME), Eylea (aflibercept) provided greater visual improvement, on average, than did Avastin (bevacizumab) or Lucentis (ranibizumab) when vision was 20/50 or worse.
 If a study participant were instructed to pay attention to “scenes” and he was attending well, he would be shown the top image as a reward. As his attention lapsed, the middle and bottom images would be shown. The face in the photograph is that of the study’s first author, Megan deBettencourt, a doctoral candidate at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute.

Brain Training May Bolster Visual Attention

People are bad at staying focused. We’ve all had our minds wander when we try to concentrate on a task that requires paying close attention but isn’t all that engaging.
Grantee News

Tufts University Researchers Identify Mechanism Involved in Causing Cataracts in Mice

A team of scientists has established that a breakdown in communication between two biochemical pathways in the eye is involved in causing cataracts.
Degenerated RPE cells from mice with geographic atrophy are shown at left. Treating the mice with NRTIs protected the RPE cells. Photos courtesy of Jayakrishna Ambati, M.D.

HIV drugs show promise for “dry” AMD

A class of medications long used to curb HIV infection shows promise as a therapy for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), suggest findings from an NIH-funded study.
Grantee News

New research unlocks a mystery of albinism

Newly published research provides the first demonstration of how a genetic mutation associated with a common form of albinism leads to the lack of melanin pigments that characterizes the condition.
Grantee News

Elderly brains learn, but maybe too much

A new study finds that in learning a visual task, older people exhibited a surprising degree of plasticity, but had trouble filtering out irrelevant information.
Clinical study of a new eye drop may offer hope to patients with dry eye. Photo courtesy of Patrick Walderzak.

NEI sets stage for new clinical trial to tackle dry eye

For some people it feels like a speck of sand in the eye, or stinging or burning that doesn’t go away. For others, dry eye disease (or simply dry eye) can become a chronic condition that leads to blurred vision or even vision loss if it goes untreated.