Japanese "eyeball licking" trend carries blindness risk

[source: http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/article/320966/12/Japanese-eyeball-licking-trend-carries-blindness-risk]

(CBS News) A strange trend among Japanese school-aged children and teens -- licking a friend or lover's eyeballs -- may be perplexing, but experts are more worried about the germs they are potentially spreading.
"This is a dangerous practice which has the potential to spread a number of bacteria that reside in the mouth to the eye resulting in bacterial infections such as conjunctivitis to styes as well as abscesses involving the lids and eye socket," Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency medicine physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, told CBSNews.com.
Eyeball licking, which is also known as "worming" or oculolinctus, has existed for quite some time, and there are numerous clips of people engaging in the act on YouTube. Japanese blog Naver Matome interviewed one concerned teacher who said that he ran into two sixth grade students licking each others' eyeballs in an equipment room. After he confronted them, they admitted it was popular in their class. His independent survey of students confirmed his fears: One-third of the children admitted to eyeball licking.
The Guardian cites a Japanese music video from the band Born, which features an eyeball licking scene, as the spark for the reignited trend.
Dr. Robert Noecker, an ophthalmologist practicing in Connecticut, told Medical Daily that the eyeballs may act as an erogenous zone due to the amount of nerves.

"The cornea is the most innervated part of the body," Noecker said. "That's why it might feel good to have it licked. It's the same thing with sucking toes -- they're so sensitive because the body needs to be able to detect minor particles and other disturbances. If you're so inclined, that's the plus."
But, eyeball licking comes with many risks. It's easy to spread bacteria that causes conjunctivitis, better known as pink eye, with your tongue. When infected with the germs, the clear lining inside the eyelid and the white of the eye gets inflamed, giving the eye a pink or red color. Normally, pink eye will go away on its own, but in severe cases people will need antibiotics or other medical treatment.
The Japanese teacher also noted with growing concern that he saw up to 10 students at a time wearing eye patches, which he realized were hiding eye ailments.

Glatter, who hasn't seen any of these cases enter his emergency room just yet, said he's also worried about the spread of sexually transmitted infections.

"Chlamydia is a bacteria of particular concern which can be spread sexually, and has the potential to lead to blindness if left untreated," he pointed out. "Although its incidence is decreasing, it is always a concern in this. Setting especially if there has been any orogenital contact."

There's also the chance that licking the eyeball could accidentally scratch it. Any cuts can become a trap for bacteria, which can lead to other problems. Dr. Phillip Rizzuto, a spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, told theHuffington Post that left untreated some of these germs could also cause blindness.

"The bacteria in the mouth is nothing like the bacteria in the eyeball, which is why we no longer recommend people lick contact lenses to moisten them," Rizzuto said.
Noecker warned teens not to try this activity at all.

"There's got to be better ways to do things," Noecker said. "I would recommend that people find another outlet that won't compromise their vision in the long term."

Michelle Castillo, CBS News

BBC E-mail: Cholesterol drugs "may save sight"

Kathy saw this story on the BBC News website and thought you
should see it.



** Cholesterol drugs 'may save sight' **
Drugs that lower cholesterol may be able to prevent one of the most common forms of blindness, according to US researchers.
< http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/news/health-22002454 >

Closure of operating theater Kids might be at the receiving end

TopNews United States
If one operating theater at Temple Street children's hospital is closed then blindness or even death can happen to children. This year the hospital has to be under budget and from next week in order to save money one of the four operating theatres is ...
See the rest of this article...CLICK HERE

Ensuring blindness-free world: The role of business

This is an e-mail from (latest news, breaking news, business, finance analysis, comments and views from Nigeria :: BusinessDay) sent by Ms. Kathy. You may also find the following link interesting: http://www.businessdayonline.com/NG/index.php/analysis/commentary/28694-ensuring-blindness-free-world-the-role-of-business

World Sight Day: Nigerian Mothers Admonished on Prevention of Blindness

This is an e-mail from (Nigerian Tribune) sent by Ms. Kathy. You may also find the following link interesting: http://tribune.com.ng/index.php/community-news/29849-world-sight-day-mothers-admonished-on-prevention-of-blindness

Lions walk to stop blindness

Story:
Lions walk to stop blindness
The North Platte Telegraph Lions Club members from across Nebraska met in North Platte Friday and participated in the Strides: Lions Walk for Diabetes Awareness.
The walk coincided with the club's state convention at the Quality Inn and Suites and wound around two miles worth of trails from the motel to the Recreation Center. Participants paid &#036;10 to join in and were also encouraged to collect pledges.
For more of this story, click on or type the URL below:
http://www.nptelegraph.com/articles/2011/05/14/news/40001871.txt

The Most Important Food for Healthy Eyes

The Most Important Food for Healthy Eyes (No, it's Not Carrots)
Posted By Dr. Mercola | May 14 2011 By Dr. Mercola Do you have any idea what
causes wild Pacific salmon to have its color? It is one of the
Following link http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/Nutrition/Food/most_important_food_for_healthy_eyes-05113110502.html was sent to you by mskathy

Vitamin D May Help Prveent Blindness

Vitamin D may help prevent blindness, according to a recent study realized in the United States. The researchers found that those who take supplements with vitamin D reduced the chances to lose their sight with the age, by 60% .


for the rest of this article go to
http://www.dailygossip.org/vitamin-d-may-prevent-blindness-938

Prevent Blindness enlists kids in battle for eye health

This story was sent to you by:  ms kathy

--------------------
Prevent Blindness enlists kids in battle for eye health
--------------------

Schoolchildren get kits to spread word to parents about importance of vision

By Patty Pensa, Special to the Tribune

April 5 2011

Some 30,000 Chicago Public Schools students will learn about eye health in a pilot program aimed to get children and their parents to take vision more seriously.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-x-c-eye-health-20110405,0,7516897.story

Visit chicagotribune.com at http://www.chicagotribune.com

Visual Impairments Specialist
Westminster Elementary School
http://lee.ebrschools.org/kathynicholslee
http://www.kathyskids.org
http://teacherweb.com/LA/RobertELeeHigh/MrsMichael/t.aspx
http://mskathyskids.blogspot.com

Glaucoma Awareness and Birth Defects Prevention Month

Glaucoma Awareness and Birth Defects Prevention Month

The Ministry of Health and Social Development through the Social Development
Department is, for the first time, observing Glaucoma Awareness and Birth
Defects Prevention throughout January 2010.

Following link http://www.bvinews.com/http://www.bvinews.com/index.php/bulletins/9097.html was sent to you by knl@ebrschools.org

With this message:

This is from an Enewspaper from the Virgin Islands

From The Sunday Times April 19, 2009 Blind to be cured with stem cells Sarah-Kate Templeton, Health Editor BRITISH scientists have developed the world's first stem cell therapy to cure the most common cause of blindness. Surgeons predict it will become a routine, one-hour procedure that will be generally available in six or seven years' time. The treatment involves replacing a layer of degenerated cells with new ones created from embryonic stem cells. It was pioneered by scientists and surgeons from the Institute of Ophthalmology at University College London and Moorfields eye hospital. This week Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical research company, will announce its financial backing to bring the therapy to patients. The treatment will tackle age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the most common cause of blindness. It affects more than 500,000 Britons and the number is forecast to increase significantly as people live longer. The disease involves the loss of eye cells. Under the new treatment, embryonic stem cells are transformed into replicas of the missing cells. They are then placed on an artificial membrane which is inserted in the back of the retina. Tom Bremridge, chief executive of the Macular Disease Society, said: "This is a huge step forward for patients. We are extremely pleased that the big guns have become involved, because, once this treatment is validated, it will be made available to a huge volume of patients." Embryonic stem cells have the ability to develop into all types of body tissue. Their use is controversial, however, because it involves the destruction of human embryos. Laboratory trials completed by the British team have demonstrated that stem cells can prevent blindness in rats with a similar disease to AMD. They have also successfully tested elements of the technology in pigs. The team is led by Professor Pete Coffey, director of the London Project to Cure Blindness, working alongside Lyndon da Cruz, a surgeon at Moorfields. Coffey said the treatment would take "less than an hour, so it really could be considered as an outpatient procedure. We are trying to get it out as a common therapy". He welcomed Pfizer's agreement to manufacture the membranes, saying: "This is a major development because of the size of the partner. We need a big pharmaceutical company to scale it up. "We have nearly 14m people within Europe with AMD. This will ensure that the therapy gets through to clinical trials in a safe and effective manner." Professor Peng Khaw, director of the Biomedical Research Centre at Moorfields and the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, added: "This shows that stem cell therapy is coming of age. It offers great hope for many sufferers around the world who cannot be treated with conventional treatment." He added: "All my patients say to me is, 'When will this stem cell treatment be ready? I want it now'." Pfizer's role would be crucial in bringing production of the membranes to an industrial level. The team is applying for regulatory approval for trials from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the Human Tissue Authority and the gene therapy advisory committee. The clinical trial, due within two years, is expected to be the second in the world to use embryonic stem cells on humans. The first, on patients with spinal cord injuries, will start this year in America.

Deaf-Blind Get Voice on Capitol Hill

This article is on the front page of the Foundation Fighting Blindness web site. Usher's Syndrome is studied here in south Louisiana--especially the southwest in the heart of "Cajun Country" because of its prevalence there. The population used to be isolated which caused the syndrome to thrive. I believe there was another such community in Italy--I forget where. I usually post articles at my nessage board but since I follow a couple of blogs on the subject...

Deaf-Blind get Voice on Capitol Hill
Usher syndrome research highlighted at congressional briefing

Imagine trying to live with the challenges of combined deafness and blindness, and at the same time, being unseen and unheard by society. That’s the unfortunate irony for the 45,000 Americans with Usher syndrome, a devastating inherited disease that robs people of their vision and their hearing.

The Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB) and Association for Eye and Vision Research co-hosted a briefing on Capitol Hill on February 5 to educate legislators about the urgent need for increased Usher syndrome awareness, as well as research funding at the National Institutes of Health — funding that can provide much-needed childhood genetic screening and development of treatments.

The briefing featured William Kimberling, Ph.D., one of the world’s leading Usher syndrome leading authorities who conducts research at Boys Town National Research Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, and the University of Iowa in Iowa City. He explained that the combined impact of hearing and vision loss is many times greater than deafness or blindness alone. “Deafness and blindness together is not like 1+1 = 2. It’s like 1+1 = 10,” he said. “Usher syndrome is a vicious disease.”

Moira Shea, a director on the board of FFB, gave staffers a compelling firsthand account of what it was like to be affected with Usher syndrome. She told attendees that challenges in communication from hearing and vision loss often lead to isolation and loneliness. Diagnosed at the age of 15, she said, “It was the worst news my parents ever got. There was no hope. The doctor just told my parents to send me to a school to learn Braille.”

While Shea has persevered with a successful Washington-based career and a master’s degree from Harvard, progressive vision loss has taken its toll on her. She said, “The vision loss process is like a series of cliffs. You go through life, and there’s a big drop in your vision, you adjust to it, move forward, and then there’s another cliff,” she said. “I am in a constant state of grieving.”

But thanks to the Foundation Fighting Blindness and the National Institutes of Health, there is hope for Shea and others who are challenged by Usher syndrome. The organizations are providing critical research funding to investigators like Dr. Kimberling who are driven to find answers to the relentless condition.

One immediate goal for Dr. Kimberling is to provide inexpensive and accessible genetic screening for young children who are born deaf or with severe hearing loss to determine which of them is affected by Usher syndrome. He estimates that as many as 15 percent of these hearing impaired children will eventually lose their vision. However, if children with Usher syndrome can be identified early on — through genetic and vision testing — then measures can be taken right away to preserve their vision as much as possible.

Not only does vision preservation provide these individuals with a better quality of life, it is likely to give them the opportunity down the road to benefit from an emerging curative treatment such as gene therapy, which Dr. Kimberling calls “the gold standard” for treating Usher syndrome. Additionally, he noted, by keeping individuals independent and productive, we can save much of the $2 billion that Usher syndrome costs our economy in health care and other supportive services.

The progress of vision loss could potentially be slowed by the administration of neuroprotective treatments, which are in clinical studies right now. Also, nutritional supplementation with fish oil and vitamin A appear to slow vision loss in some individuals. Even wearing sunglasses in bright outdoor light might give a person two or three years of additional useful vision.

Usher syndrome is caused by a genetic variation (a mutation) in the cells of both the retina and the inner ear. Genes lead to the production of proteins, and if a defective gene leads to a single missing or incorrect protein, it can mean serious trouble. Dr. Kimberling explained that Usher proteins in the retina work together like a crane to deliver important chemicals from one end of a cell to the other. If one protein isn’t doing its job, it’s like losing the motor or the hook or the cable, and ultimately, then the crane doesn’t work, and the health of the retina is severely affected.
Dr. Kimberling added that much of what is known about Usher syndrome is relatively new information. “Up until about the year 2000, we had no idea that such a mechanism [the crane-like structure] existed.”

Thus far, variations in nine genes have been linked to Usher syndrome, and researchers know there are more to be identified.

The three NIH institutes currently funding research for the disease are: the National Eye Institute, the National Institute for Deafness and Other Communications Disorders, and the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development. Much of the research underway not only impacts people with Usher syndrome, it is giving us important information about how all people see and hear.

Throughout his presentation, Dr. Kimberling kept emphasizing the fact that Usher syndrome research is a greatly under-funded and the condition is greatly overlooked. Few people have heard of the disease, yet it is more common than amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease) or Huntington’s disease. Remarkably, over the last 36 years, only one piece of congressional legislation mentioned deaf-blindness.

Despite the challenges that lie ahead for Moira Shea, she remains positive and hopeful. “I think about the work that the Foundation is doing and it keeps me going. I know that today, any 15-year-old kid with Usher syndrome isn’t getting the news my parents got. They are being told there is hope. Most likely, there will be a treatment in their lifetime.”

Source Link: http://www.blindness.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1462:deaf-blind-get-voice-on-capital-hill&catid=67:usher-syndrome&Itemid=123

I posted this on my message board but it's worth posting here too!


[Another good thing about having a handsome, intelligent "A" student in the White House. ~K ]

Prevent Blindness America Commends Barack Obama and Congress for Expanding Access to Vision Care Coverage for Children
Additional $32.8 billion in SCHIP Funding Gives Millions of Kids a Chance at Brighter Future

CHICAGO – Prevent Blindness America, the nation’s oldest volunteer eye health and safety organization dedicated to fighting blindness and preserving sight, praised President Barack Obama for his public support of providing vision care to America’s underserved children. By allocating an additional $32.8 billion for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), health care, including vision care benefits, will now be available to approximately 11 million children across the country.

“No child should be falling behind at school because he can’t hear the teacher or see the blackboard. I refuse to accept that millions of our kids fail to reach their full potential because we fail to meet their basic needs,” said President Obama at the bill’s signing. “In a decent society, there are certain obligations that are not subject to tradeoffs or negotiation – health care for our children is one of those obligations.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only one in three children in America have received eye care services before the age of six. Yet, more than 12 million school-age children, or one in four, have some form of vision problem including amblyopia, strabismus or significant refractive error. Fortunately, many of these vision problems can be corrected through early detection and treatment.“We know that the availability of much-needed government funds continues to dwindle as health care costs continue to spiral upward,” said Hugh R. Parry, president and CEO of Prevent Blindness America. “We applaud President Obama and all those who worked to make this expansion of coverage possible for recognizing the importance of vision care for our most precious resource, our children.”

The newly expanded plan will now cover approximately 11 million children by 2013, up from the current 7 million. The plan seeks to bridge the ever-increasing gap for families whose incomes are too high for Medicaid but are unable to afford private insurance.

To find out more about children’s eye health or how you can urge your government representatives to support sight-saving legislation, please call 800-331-2020 or visit www.preventblindness.org/advocacy. download the press release (pdf)http://www.preventblindness.org/news/releases/SCHIPRelease.pdfSource Link: Prevent Blindness America http://www.preventblindness.org/news/releases/021209_1.h

http://www.preventblindness.org/news/releases/021209_1.htm