Israel makes dramatic advance in blindness prevention
Lessons from Israel's health-care system could optimize eye health around the world, says a Tel Aviv University researcher
2013-07-11
(Press-News.org) According to the World Health Organization, 80% of blindness is preventable or treatable — but it remains a severe health concern across the globe, even in industrialized countries.
Now hope is on the horizon — especially if countries are willing to emulate Israel's approach to eye health, says Prof. Michael Belkin of the Goldschleger Eye Research Institute at Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Sheba Medical Center in a new study published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology. In the last decade, rates of preventable blindness in Israel have been cut by more than half — from 33.8 cases of blindness per 100,000 residents in 1999 to 14.8 in 2010. This improvement, found across all four main causes of avoidable blindness — age-related deterioration, glaucoma, diabetes, and cataract — is unmatched anywhere else in the world, he says.
The secret is not only the innovative methods of treatment that were added to the Israeli medical system, but their universal availability and accessibility, as well as good patient compliance with treatment regimens, including the correct use of prescribed medications.
Israel also offers community-based programs, such as dedicated diabetes clinics, which promote early prevention and timely treatment for diabetes-related complications that can lead to blindness. Prof. Belkin notes that such programs save public and private health care money in the long term.
Advancing eye care
To evaluate the effectiveness of eye health care in Israel, Prof. Belkin and his fellow researchers Alon Skaat, Angela Chetrit and Ofra Kalter-Leibovici from TAU and Sheba, conducted a statistical study measuring rates of blindness in the Israeli population over twelve years. They discovered that Israel has emerged as a world leader in preventing avoidable blindness, reducing rates by over 56%. The rates of untreatable genetic causes of blindness remained steady over the same period.
Several solutions are employed by Israel, which approaches the problem of blindness from medical, public health, and cultural perspectives. For example, age-related macular degeneration, one of the leading causes of blindness in the industrialized world, is treated with a drug therapy originally approved for colon cancer tumors. By diluting the drug to create smaller doses for the eye — an idea that originated in the United States — it is possible to provide inexpensive therapy to thousands of patients.
From the public policy standpoint, Prof. Belkin notes that the decline in blindness due to cataracts is due to a change in health care policy rather than any technical advance. Since the 1990's, patients have been able to choose their doctors privately for cataract surgery. This practically eliminated wait times for surgery and prevented the condition from growing worse over the long term.
Long term savings
Prof. Belkin believes that it's possible for any country to adopt Israel's strategies for reducing blindness. Although the initial costs can be daunting — such as the price of top-notch medications and setting up clinics — it's a worthwhile investment. Treating blindness as it develops rather than preventing it from the start is much more expensive for the healthcare system in the long term. Diabetes clinics in Israel pay for themselves in about two years' time, he says, factoring in their impact on preventing greater health concerns.
But even the most advanced and widely available treatments can't be effective if patients are not examined by an ophthalmologist and don't adhere to the treatment regimen. In Israel, an exceptionally high rate of adherence to these regimens is a major contributor to the prevention of blindness.
###
American Friends of Tel Aviv University (http://www.aftau.org) supports Israel's leading, most comprehensive and most sought-after center of higher learning. Independently ranked 94th among the world's top universities for the impact of its research, TAU's innovations and discoveries are cited more often by the global scientific community than all but 10 other universities.
Internationally recognized for the scope and groundbreaking nature of its research and scholarship, Tel Aviv University consistently produces work with profound implications for the future.
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2013-07-11
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Fewer Americans may be feeling the blues, with rates of depression in people over 50 on the decline, according to a new University of Michigan Health System study.
Between 1998 and 2008, rates of severe depression fell among the majority of older adults, especially the elderly, who have historically been a higher risk group for depression, new findings show. Meanwhile, late middle agers between ages 55-59 appeared to experience increased depression over the 10 year period.
The nationally representative study appears in the Journal of General Internal ...
2013-07-11
NEW YORK, JULY 10, 2013 — Researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, together with collaborators in Germany, have developed a new method for identifying the cell of origin of intracellular and secreted proteins within multicellular environments.
The technique, named cell type specific labeling using amino acid precursors (CTAP), exploits the inability of vertebrate cells to synthesize essential amino acids normally required for growth and homeostasis. The research was published online in the journal Nature Methods on June 30, 2013.
This technological advance ...
2013-07-11
Everyone knows that as we grow older our bones become more fragile. Now a team of U.S. and German scientists led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley has shown that this bone-aging process can be significantly accelerated through deficiency of vitamin D - the sunshine vitamin.
Vitamin D deficiency is a widespread medical condition that has been linked to the health and fracture risk of human bone on the basis of low calcium intake and reduced bone density. ...
2013-07-11
New research in the Journal of Newborns & Infant Nursing Reviews concludes that so-called "kangaroo care" (KC), the skin-to-skin and chest-to-chest touching between baby and mother, offers developmentally appropriate therapy for hospitalized preterm infants.
In the article, "Kangaroo Care as a Neonatal Therapy," Susan Ludington-Hoe, RN, CNM, PhD, FAAN, from Case Western Reserve University's Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, describes how KC delivers benefits beyond bonding and breastfeeding for a hospital's tiniest newborns.
"KC is now considered an essential ...
2013-07-11
Preparing semiconductor quantum dots is sometimes more of a black art than a science. That presents an obstacle to further progress in, for example, creating better solar cells or lighting devices, where quantum dots offer unique advantages that would be particularly useful if they could be used as basic building blocks for constructing larger nanoscale architectures.
Andrew Greytak, a chemist in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina, is leading a research team that's making the process of synthesizing quantum dots much more systematic. ...
2013-07-11
Today, the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) announced that its scientists have successfully completed the first full-scale simulation of an operating nuclear reactor. CASL is modeling nuclear reactors on supercomputers to help researchers better understand reactor performance with much higher reliability than previously available methods, with the goal of ultimately increasing power output, extending reactor life, and reducing waste.
Simulation results from the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) program, developed by CASL, ...
2013-07-11
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have discovered that a protein used by cancer cells to evade death also plays a vital role in heart health. This dual role complicates efforts to develop cancer drugs that target the protein, but may lead to new therapies for heart muscle damage. The research appeared in the June 15 edition of the scientific journal Genes & Development.
The protein, MCL1, is currently the focus of widespread cancer drug development efforts. MCL1 is best known as an inhibitor of death via the cell's suicide pathway in a process called apoptosis. ...
2013-07-11
Cyberbullying in the college environment can pose serious consequences for students' living and learning environments, including physical endangerment, according to newly published research by a UT Arlington associate education professor.
Jiyoon Yoon, director of the Early Childhood – Grade 6 Program for the UT Arlington College of Education and Health Professions, co-authored the paper "Cyberbullying Presence, Extent, and Forms in a Midwestern Post-secondary Institution," which appears in the June 2013 issue of Information Systems Education Journal.
The researchers ...
2013-07-11
Thresher sharks hunt schooling sardines in the waters off a small coral island in the Philippines by rapidly slapping their tails hard enough to stun or kill several of the smaller fish at once, according to research published July 10 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Simon Oliver of the Thresher Shark Research and Conservation Project, and colleagues from other institutions.
The researchers tracked shark activity with handheld video cameras and analyzed 25 instances of tail-slapping to stun prey. Sharks seemed to initiate the behavior by drawing their pectoral fins ...
2013-07-11
On July 9, 2013, at 11:09 a.m. EDT, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later. These particles cannot travel through the atmosphere to harm humans on Earth, but they can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground.
Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 375 miles per second, which is a fairly ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Israel makes dramatic advance in blindness prevention
Lessons from Israel's health-care system could optimize eye health around the world, says a Tel Aviv University researcher
