This Week in Ophthalmology: Week of September 8, 2024

Welcome to the latest edition of This Week in Ophthalmology, a video series highlighting some of the top articles featured on the Ophthalmology Times website.

David Hutton had the opportunity to talk to Dr. Jennifer Lim prior to her presentation this week at the Retina Society meeting in Lisbon, Portugal. At the meeting, she presented differential artery-vein analysis and how it improves OCTA performance for AI classification of diabetic retinopathy.

Watch Now: Differential artery-vein analysis improves OCTA performance for AI classification of diabetic retinopathy

In other news from the Retina Society meeting, the Sight-Saving Engagement and Evaluation in New Haven (SEEN) Program successfully identified and engaged individuals at high risk for diabetic retinopathy (DR) who had social determinants of health and co-morbidities.

Investigators designed a program of community engagement to intervene in the urban population and provide coordinated patient care for participants at high risk of developing DR and then test the program’s effectiveness.

They used the Yale New Haven Health electronic health record (EHR) to identify participants who were at high risk of blindness from DR. The study included adults with diabetes who had not undergone an eye examination within 1 year of outreach. You can check out the results in our coverage on Ophthalmology Times.com

Learn more: The new haven SEEN program: Addressing adverse social determinants of health to prevent blindness

The number of individuals worldwide who are affected by glaucoma and who will be in the future is burgeoning. The current push is to identify biomarkers for earlier diagnosis, both to determine those at higher risk of progression and to provide new therapeutic targets.

Researchers have pointed to the need for a transition from reactive medicine to predictive, preventive, and personalized medicine. This transition may be through metabolomics.

Metabolomics is the qualitative and quantitative analysis of low-molecular-weight small molecules. These include amino acids, carbohydrates, nucleosides/nucleotides, tricarboxylic acid, intermediates, and lipids. The human metabolome, defined as the complete set of small molecule substances, is now thought to contain more than 110,000 metabolites, but many have yet to be identified.

in open-angle glaucoma, certain metabolites have a higher frequency. Spectroscopy of aqueous humor, plasma, serum, and tear samples has been performed, but the results in the aqueous humor differ from those in the serum and tears.

Ongoing research has associated the different metabolites and their corresponding pathways that are altered in glaucoma.

Read Now: Tapping metabolomics for timely detection of glaucoma cases

Prevent Blindness is debuting its Prevent Blindness Children’s Vision Health Map, an online interactive tool specifically designed to display geographic variations in common children’s vision problems as well as visual impairment and blindness.

Data used in the map was provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vision and Eye Health Surveillance System and other sources from research by NORC at the University of Chicago.

The purpose of the Prevent Blindness Children’s Vision Health Map is to provide the public, healthcare professionals, public health professionals, program partners, and government representatives, with county- and state-level characteristics that may impact children’s vision and eye health conditions and outcomes.

Read More: Prevent Blindness unveils Children’s Vision Health Map, corresponding report