Eye tests are an important way to catch potential eye-related issues in children, but more than two-thirds of kids in the United States are not receiving them at their checkups. Those with Medicaid and other public health insurance were far less likely to receive these vision checks in the past year at their primary care doctor’s office, according to researchers at University of Michigan and Duke University. Children with private insurance had only slightly higher rates of screening, at 34%, the study found. The lowest rates of eye screening were among uninsured children, at 18%, and those with safety net insurance provided for those with low incomes, were at a 28% screening rate. “Well-child visits, and other annual checkups such as school or camp physicals, are critical opportunities for catching eye-related issues in children that can have lasting consequences for their education and lives, and these data clearly show room for improvement,” said Dr. Olivia Killeen. She is a clinical fellow in pediatric ophthalmology at Duke Health in Durham, N.C. Killeen and colleagues conducted the study while she was a National Clinician Scholar at the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and Kellogg Eye Center, both in Ann Arbor. Children aged 3 to 5 had the highest screening rates, but these were still low, the study authors said in a Michigan Medicine…  read on >  read on >

British researchers may have found a way to diagnose Parkinson’s disease several years sooner. Researchers at University College London and Moorfields Eye Hospital say that eye scans may be able to detect signs of Parkinson’s up to seven years before diagnosis. “I continue to be amazed by what we can discover through eye scans. While we are not yet ready to predict whether an individual will develop Parkinson’s, we hope that this method could soon become a pre-screening tool for people at risk of disease,” said lead author Dr. Siegfried Wagner, of the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital. “Finding signs of a number of diseases before symptoms emerge means that, in the future, people could have the time to make lifestyle changes to prevent some conditions arising, and clinicians could delay the onset and impact of life-changing neurodegenerative disorders,” Wagner said in a university news release. Artificial intelligence (AI) was used in the analysis of the AlzEye dataset and the wider U.K. Biobank. AlzEye is believed to be the world’s largest single-institution retinal imaging information database. Even though Parkinson’s has a relatively low prevalence in the population — about 0.1% to 0.2% — these data sets helped identify these subtle markers. Eye scan data — a field called “oculomics” — have previously revealed signs of other neurodegenerative conditions, including Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis…  read on >  read on >

People may assume that a COVID-19 infection protects them the next time they encounter the virus, but that’s not necessarily true. A new study of 750 vaccinated seniors living in retirement homes and long-term care facilities found that those infected during the first omicron wave were actually more vulnerable to reinfection with a later wave. “This research highlights the need for continued vigilance and underscores the importance of ongoing preventive measures against COVID-19,” said study co-author Dawn Bowdish, an immunologist and associate professor of medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. “We must remain cautious and proactive in our approach to protecting public health,” she said in a university news release. Bowdish and her colleagues said the findings underscore the need to consider COVID vaccine boosters this fall. This should serve as a warning that there are still unknowns about how previous infections will affect susceptibility to the variants now in circulation, said co-author Andrew Costa, an epidemiologist and associate professor in McMaster’s Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact. “These findings strongly suggest broader research is required to understand whether the wider population shares the same susceptibility as the seniors our group studied,” Costa said in the release. “Until we know more, we think it’s smart for everyone to protect themselves.” Bowdish said long-term care residents are easier to study because COVID-19 infections…  read on >  read on >

Phillip Durst was working near an industrial dishwasher when something went awry, and the machinery spewed caustic chemicals into his eyes. “If I had been standing a foot left or right, it wouldn’t have hit me right where it did. I was just standing in the wrong place,” said Durst, 51, of Birmingham, Ala. The chemicals caused severe burns to his eyes, blinding him. “I can’t describe the pain — more pain than I’ve ever been in,” Durst recalled of the April 2017 incident. “I’ve had broken bones, stitches in my head, crashed on skateboard ramps, you name it. I’ve hit and hurt myself so many times, the sins of my youth, and I’ve never felt anything so intense or so unreal in my life. “I was clawing at my face, just trying to get my left eye open to get some sort of water flush solution in it,” he continued. “At one point I asked somebody to pick me up and turn me upside down in a 25-gallon sink that we had been filling with water. I was squeezing lemons into my eyes (in an attempt to neutralize the chemicals). That was preferable to the pain I was feeling.” At first, it appeared Durst might be permanently blinded. The injury had clouded over his corneas and blocked his eyes’ natural ability to regenerate healthy…  read on >  read on >

Heavy screen users often buy blue light-filtering eyeglasses to protect their eyes — but they may be wasting their money, a new study suggests. A new research review suggests these blue light-filtering glasses probably make no difference to eye strain, eye health or sleep quality, at least in the short term. And it’s still unclear whether these glasses protect against retina damage because the research did not evaluate this, according to findings published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. “We found there may be no short-term advantages with using blue light-filtering spectacle lenses to reduce visual fatigue associated with computer use, compared to non-blue light-filtering lenses. It is also currently unclear whether these lenses affect vision quality or sleep-related outcomes, and no conclusions could be drawn about any potential effects on retinal health in the longer term,” said senior author Laura Downie. She heads the Downie Laboratory at the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. “People should be aware of these findings when deciding whether to purchase these spectacles,” Downie added in a Cochrane news release. Researchers reviewed 17 randomized controlled trials from six countries. The studies’ size ranged from just five participants to 156. Study length varied from one day to five weeks. The quality and duration of the studies need to be considered, Downie said. “We performed the systematic review to Cochrane…  read on >  read on >

It’s fun to playfully toss a toddler into the air, or tote a kid piggyback-style on your shoulders. But those delightful giggles may come with a risk of head injury from a typically overlooked hazard — the room’s ceiling fan. Each year U.S. emergency rooms treat about 2,300 children for head injuries caused by ceiling fans, according to Consumer Product Safety Commission data collected between 2013 through 2021. These ER-treated injuries totaled more than 20,500 over the period, a new study in Pediatrics reports. And there are probably a lot more that go uncounted, said lead researcher Dr. Holly Hughes Garza, an epidemiologist at Dell Children’s Trauma and Injury Research Center in Austin, Texas. “It’s important to keep in mind we were only looking at kids who went to an emergency room for their injury, so we’re not talking about every kid who bumped their head on a fan,” Garza said. “There’s probably a lot more kids that that happens to and they don’t actually go seek medical care.” Lacerations are the most commonly treated injury from ceiling fans, with ER docs tending to cuts in 3 out of 5 (60%) cases, results show. But concussions and skull fractures were also reported, the data indicate. “They may be rare injuries, but at the same time they’re injuries where if they occur, they can be severe,”…  read on >  read on >

A new type of medication, JAK inhibitors, can effectively treat moderate to severe alopecia areata, a hair loss condition that has been historically hard to treat. A study of its effectiveness, by Dr. Brett King and Dr. Brittany Craiglow of Yale University, was published in August in a supplement to the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. “Because alopecia areata is an inflammatory condition, a JAK inhibitor will essentially reduce the inflammation that is fueling the disease and bring your immune system back into balance,” said dermatologist Dr. Sandra Johnson. She is an adjunct professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, in Little Rock, who was not involved with the study. “The development of JAK inhibitors has given us another treatment to improve the lives of patients with alopecia areata,” Johnson said in a news release from the American Academy of Dermatology. The condition is more common in kids but can happen at any age. It involves sudden hair loss with affected patches that grow larger. In some cases, it spreads to the entire head or body. It is also more common in those who have a close blood relative with the disease and in people who have been treated for cancer with a drug called nivolumab (Opdivo). Medical conditions such as asthma, hay fever, eczema, thyroid disease, vitiligo and Down syndrome…  read on >  read on >

When teens vape, their lungs pay a price, researchers report. The warning stems from a detailed analysis of smoking habit histories shared by just over 2,000 U.S. teens during a series of recent annual surveys. The upshot: When compared with teens who’ve never vaped, those who reported using electronic cigarettes in the month prior to being surveyed saw their risk for wheezing and shortness of breath shoot up by about 80%. Vapers also faced double the risk for telltale signs of bronchitis, the survey revealed. And most of the hits to respiratory health linked to vaping held up even after taking into account whether the teens also smoked cigarettes or marijuana. “While e-cigarettes likely have fewer negative health impacts than traditional cigarettes, they are not risk-free, especially for youth or young adults who have never used any other tobacco product,” said study lead author Alayna Tackett. She is a pediatric psychologist and researcher with the Center for Tobacco Research at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, in Columbus. Tackett and her colleagues explored the impact vaping has on respiratory health by analyzing four years’ worth of surveys administered by the Southern California Children’s Health Study between 2014 and 2018. On average, roughly 1,700 teens participated in the annual survey, though the final analysis focused on about 2,100 teens, equally divided between boys and girls,…  read on >  read on >