Also in the News…

From the evaluation of a perimetry app used to test for pediatric glaucoma to  the long-term ocular effects of COVID, these are the trailblazing studies that caught our attention this week…

Glaucoma app efficacy. A joint India-Australia venture – coming out of the Dr Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences in New Delhi and the University of Melbourne – has sought to evaluate the efficacy of using a portable tablet (specifically, an iPad with a perimetry app that uses the Melbourne Rapid Fields test) for visual field testing of pediatric glaucoma. The team compared the perimetric outcomes of the app with the perimetric Humphrey Field Analyser (HFA), finding that the iPad-based visual test was preferable to children over the HFA test, and that the MRF results correlated strongly with those of the HFA. Link

Gene Editing 101. Examining the impact of gene editing in a cohort of patients with Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), a multi-institutional US team of researchers conducted a clinical trial on 12 adults and two children suffering from the rare disease. The team used an experimental gene editing therapy, Edit-101, to test whether the therapy improved visual acuity, alongside other factors, with their findings indicating varied improvements in 11 of the participants. The researchers say their study highlights the potential for the therapy to be used to treat other inherited retinal degenerations. Link

COVID and the eye. A PLOS Pathogens paper has published the first study on how the COVID-19 virus can penetrate the blood-retinal barrier. Using humanized mouse models to illustrate the ocular effects of SARS-CoV-2, a team from the Mason Eye Institute at the University of Missouri School of Medicine found that the virus can infect the inside of the eye even if that wasn’t the initial source of transmission. The findings add to the current understanding of the long-term effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection, the researchers say, recommending that any patients diagnosed with COVID should also be checked for retina pathology by an ophthalmologist. Link

Clinging on to contacts. To investigate how the Acanthamoeba organism might adhere to scleral contact lenses (ScCL) based on the lens shape, a team based at the Paulista School of Medicine, São Paulo Hospital, inoculated two strains of A. polyphaga (CDC:V062 and ATCC 30461) onto five differently shaped contact lenses.They found that the strains all had greater adhesion to the ScCLs over traditional fat-shaped contact lenses, indicating that the curved shape of these scleral lenses favor amoeba adhesion. Link