An investigational new drug significantly improved a common and debilitating circadian rhythm sleep disorder that frequently affects people who are completely blind, a multicenter study finds. The results were presented Monday ...
Opioids, such as morphine, are still the most effective class of painkillers, but they come with unwanted side effects and can also be addictive and deadly at high doses. Designing new pain-killing drugs ...
(Medical Xpress)—Basal cell carcinoma is the most common form of cancer. While unlikely to metastasize and therefore associated with low mortality, it can be disfiguring and costly to treat. Typically, ...
James O'Dell, M.D., chief of the Veterans Administration Nebraska-Western Iowa Health Care System's Omaha medical center and the UNMC divisions of rheumatology and immunology, is the primary author of a study that has been ...
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed an easier and more effective method for inserting genes into eye cells that could greatly expand gene therapy to help restore sight to ...
Data from AMPLE presented at EULAR 2013, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism, demonstrate comparable efficacy and similar safety profiles between subcutaneous abatacept (ABA) and adalimumab (ADA).
New data presented today at EULAR 2013, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism show that apremilast administered to patients with psoriatic arthritis continues to demonstrate meaningful clinical responses ...
A new study presented at EULAR 2013, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism, shows that rapid evaluation for Giant Cell Arteritis (GCA) by Color Doppler Ultrasound (CDUS) followed by immediate initiation ...
(Medical Xpress)—Researchers in the University's Physics and Pharmacy & Pharmacology Departments are using a pioneering technique to study the properties and characteristics of our skin, in tests that could ...
A team of NIH-supported researchers is the first to show, in mice, an unexpected two-step process that happens during the growth and regeneration of inner ear tip links. Tip links are extracellular tethers ...
(HealthDay)—For patients with cancer with Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea (CDAD), fidaxomicin treatment is associated with improved outcomes compared with vancomycin treatment, according to res ...
Danish researchers have just published findings that explain a previously unknown mechanism used by cells to communicate with one another. The research significantly contributes to understanding why some children are born ...
A re-analysis of the data from a pivotal study of rosiglitazone found no increased risk of cardiovascular events associated with the controversial diabetes drug, according to researchers at the Duke Clinical Research Institute ...
Together, Butler Hospital and Rhode Island Hospital are participating in The ADvance Study, a clinical trial investigating the use of deep brain stimulation (DBS) as a treatment for patients with Alzheimer's disease. The ...
A team of researchers has made a significant discovery which may have a dramatic impact on children stricken with Tay-Sachs disease, a degenerative and fatal neurological condition that often strikes in the ...
Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors. Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness. Total blindness is the complete lack of form and visual light perception and is clinically recorded as NLP, an abbreviation for "no light perception." Blindness is frequently used to describe severe visual impairment with residual vision. Those described as having only light perception have no more sight than the ability to tell light from dark and the general direction of a light source.
In order to determine which people may need special assistance because of their visual disabilities, various governmental jurisdictions have formulated more complex definitions referred to as legal blindness. In North America and most of Europe, legal blindness is defined as visual acuity (vision) of 20/200 (6/60) or less in the better eye with best correction possible. This means that a legally blind individual would have to stand 20 feet (6.1 m) from an object to see it—with corrective lenses—with the same degree of clarity as a normally sighted person could from 200 feet (61 m). In many areas, people with average acuity who nonetheless have a visual field of less than 20 degrees (the norm being 180 degrees) are also classified as being legally blind. Approximately ten percent of those deemed legally blind, by any measure, have no vision. The rest have some vision, from light perception alone to relatively good acuity. Low vision is sometimes used to describe visual acuities from 20/70 to 20/200.
By the 10th Revision of the WHO International Statistical Classification of Diseases, Injuries and Causes of Death, low vision is defined as visual acuity of less than 20/60 (6/18), but equal to or better than 20/200 (6/60), or corresponding visual field loss to less than 20 degrees, in the better eye with best possible correction. Blindness is defined as visual acuity of less than 20/400 (6/120), or corresponding visual field loss to less than 10 degrees, in the better eye with best possible correction.
Blind people with undamaged eyes may still register light non-visually for the purpose of circadian entrainment to the 24-hour light/dark cycle. Light signals for this purpose travel through the retinohypothalamic tract and are not affected by optic nerve damage beyond where the retinohypothalamic tract exits.
Researchers have identified a new virus in patients with severe brain infections in Vietnam. Further research is needed to determine whether the virus is responsible for the symptoms of disease.
The first experimental drug to boost brain synapses lost in Alzheimer's disease has been developed by researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute. The drug, called NitroMemantine, combines two ...
In autism, brain regions tailored to respond to voices are poorly connected to reward-processing circuits, according to a new study by scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
The quality of wakefulness affects how quickly a mammal falls asleep, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report in a study that identifies two proteins never before linked to alertness and sleep-wake ...
(Medical Xpress)—Rett Syndrome is a neurological disorder that affects about 1 in 10,000 girls. Back in 1992, University of Edinburgh researcher Adrian Bird discovered that the protein, MeCP2, plays a major ...
(HealthDay)—Doctors should avoid ordering certain antibiotics for older patients who take cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, such as Lipitor, Canadian researchers say.
By the time 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan finally got a lung transplant last week, she'd been waiting for months, and her parents had sued to give her a better chance at surgery. Her cystic fibrosis was threatening ...
An international team led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University has identified a highly promising new anti-tuberculosis ...
Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers have identified in the most aggressive forms of cancer a gene known to regulate embryonic stem cell self-renewal, beginning a creative search for a drug that can block its activity.
A team from the New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Research Institute and the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center of Columbia University has generated patient-specific beta cells, or insulin-producing cells, that accurately reflect ...