Air pollution can play havoc with your eyes. Here’s how

                                                                   

As post Diwali air pollution continues to make news and raise concerns, it is important to safeguard ourselves from the side-effects of toxic pollutants that can cause respiratory disorders, lung cancer, brain or kidney damage and heart disease in long run. 

Higher levels of air pollution in general can lead to eye conditions like conjunctivitis, eye irritation or dry eye. Dry eye is a condition where your eyes don't produce enough tears to lubricate your eye.

"Effect of air pollution or eyes manifestation of air pollution can range from minimal symptoms to chronic discomfort and eye irritation. Common symptoms include itching, irritation, chronic discomfort, dry eye syndrome," says Dr Sheetal Ballal, consultant- Ophthalmology, Manipal Hospital, Old Airport Road.

Symptoms are higher among contact lens wearers. Poor air quality can accelerate pre-existing dry eye disease, she says.

Apart from the above-mentioned eye conditions, high levels of air pollution can also increase risk of age-related macular degeneration as the pollutants may enter bloodstream and damage the small blood vessels within the eye. Studies also suggest that pollution can increase our risk of developing an eye condition called glaucoma that can cause blindness.

Can pollution lead to permanent loss of vision?

There have been instances when people have lost their eyes due to eye allergies, one of the conditions that occur due to air pollution.

"Pollutants are very common causes for eye allergies and dry eyes. Disruption of protective atmospheric UV layer increases risk of retinal damage (ARMD) and visual loss. One of my young patients, an 18-year-old girl lost one eye permanently. She had developed eye allergies. She had shifted to Mumbai from her hometown. We had asked her to use steroid eye drops for 1 week and to follow up but she self-medicated and came after 6 months with glaucoma and permanent loss of vision in one eye," says Dr Sandeep Kataria, Consultant Opthalmologist, Wockhardt Hospital.

Moving away from the polluted environment can improve eye health and benefit people with eye allergies.

"I see patients’ eyes getting better when they go to their home town during summer vacations. That's a real powerful proof. I also saw a marked decrease in eye allergies during the covid lockdowns," he adds.

Protecting eyes from air pollution

Dr Kataria and Dr Ballal suggest ways to protect your precious eyes from the harmful effects of pollution

* Simple home remedies like frequent cold eye compresses reduce symptoms of eye allergies. 

* Switching to electric vehicles and solar energy are long term solutions to avoid pollution in general. 

* People wearing contact lenses should be more careful since they are more prone to develop additional eye problems. 

* Wear good quality protective glasses to prevent pollutants from entering the eye

* Avoiding outdoors when pollution is at high peak like early morning

* Avoiding contact lens use when air quality is poor washing hands frequently, avoiding rubbing eyes using lubricating eyedrops as prescribed by the eye doctor.

* Detailed eye check is recommended in case there is constant eye irritation.

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.   

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Broccoli may save your sight

Eating broccoli is the key to good eyesight and curbing loss of vision, a new study claims.

The green vegetable contains a compound called indole-3-carbinol (I3C).

During tests, researchers have found a highly potent concentration of the property could be used to treat age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss.

To reap the benefits, one would have to eat ‘an unreasonable amount of broccoli’, the team at Buck Institute concede - about 10 times the recommended helping.

But the researchers hope their study could lead to the discovery of related molecules to develop targeted treatment for sight-loss.

Eat your way to good eyes: A study claims broccoli contains a key compound that activates a detoxifying receptor protein in the retina.
That receptor protein is crucial to preventing age-related maculur degeneration.

It is the latest piece of good press for broccoli: recent studies have also touted the vegetable as preventative treatment for lymphoma, metastatic cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer.

In eyes, I3C activates AhR, a receptor protein which drives chemical detoxification in the retina.

AhR declines with age, but it is crucial for keeping eyes clear and healthy.

Previous studies show that AhR-deficient mice develop a condition which looks extremely similar to AMD.

Buck faculty and lead author Arvind Ramanathan, PhD, decided to try boosting AhR using broccoli’s I3C.

But he knew there was a challenge - I3C is weak activator of AhR.
So he did a virtual search on a publicly-available database of millions of compounds to find ones with the same properties.

His team found 2,2-aminophenyl indole (2AI).

2AI has the same chemical makeup as I3C, but it is ten times more potent and would bind to AhR with more strength.

Age-related maculur degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of vision-loss.

These two images (pictured) demonstrate the impact.

Left is an eye with normal sight.

Right is an eye with AMD ‘2AI prevented cell death in the retinas of mice that were exposed to light stress,’ said Buck faculty and co-senior author Deepak Lamba, MBBS, PhD, who is developing stem-cell based therapies for degenerative eye diseases.

‘Our next step is to study the functional outcomes of treatment with 2AI, something I am eager to do because environmental stress is the major contributor to age-related vision loss.

The study’s results also suggests people should eat foods rich in omega-7 palmitoleic acid, such as nuts, fish, dairy and vegetable oils.
 

Injecting palmitoleic acid into mice had protective effects on their retinal cells.

this is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.
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Scientists develop easier test for blindness

Scientists claim to have developed a quick and accurate test 

for one of the world’s leading causes of blindness.

Researchers from Australia’s Vision Centre demonstrated the 

test under lights for age-related macular degeneration (AMD) 

- one of the world’s leading causes of blindness.

A new study shows that age-related macular degeneration 

(AMD) can be just as effectively and more rapidly and 

inexpensively diagnosed under bright lights, instead of 

requiring patients to sit for 20 minutes in a darkened room.

While current tests for AMD are done in the light, scientists 

have proposed that it might be better if the patient has their 

vision adapted to the dark prior to the test.

This is because they had found that rod receptors - vision 

cells that we use to see in black and white and in low light - 

die earlier in AMD than the cone receptors we use to see in 

colour during the day. So it had been suggested that AMD 

tests would be more accurate if they were based on the 

health of a person’s rods.

Recent research, however, has shown that the eye’s cones, 

while dying later than rods, start to deteriorate at the same 

time as the ‘night vision’ cells.

Using the True-Field Analyser, researchers tested how pupils 

respond to images on LCD screens.

The scientists found little to no difference in the results - with 

the True-Field Analyser, we could diagnose AMD just as well 

regardless of how much light the eyes were exposed to during 

the test.

Our research indicates that it’s not necessary for people to be 

dark-adapted, which eliminates any long waiting periods and 

the need for dark rooms. So it is an easier test than was 

previously thought, researchers said.