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Health Check: Watching TV to Identify Glaucoma

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19/11/2014

Watching TV to Identify Glaucoma

BBC World Service - Health Check, Watching TV to Identify Glaucoma

How using eye-tracking software is helping to detect Glaucoma

How using eye-tracking software is helping to detect Glaucoma, The success of  community HIV groups in Mozambique, Walking in a ‘happy’ way to change people’s thinking

Glaucoma is a disease of the optic nerve in the back of the eye and is the world’s most common form of irreversible blindness. If it is diagnosed early it is fairly easily and successfully treated with medication or surgery, but around half of cases go undetected and some of those people will eventually go blind. Researchers at City University London are experimenting with a new way of detecting glaucoma by using eye-trackers to monitor patients whilst they watch TV. Professor David Crabb is the lead author of the study, which has just been published in the journal Frontiers of Aging Neuroscience.

HIV Community Groups
Mozambique is one of the countries with the highest HIV prevalences in the world with at least 1.6 million people living with the infection. But only half a million of these patients are on life-saving antiretroviral therapy due to drugs not being available and the cumbersome process of accessing them, especially in rural areas. In a bid to tackle this, Medicins Sans Frontieres started community groups that enabled patients to collect medicine on behalf of their other group members. As the BBC’s Emmanuel Igunza reports from Maputo, the programme is reaping huge benefits seven years after it began.
 

Walking ‘Happy’
Years ago researchers found that when people were instructed to open their mouth in a smile, their mood improved, even though they did not know they were smiling. When we feel happy we smile and the brain gets so used to this connection that it seems to occur the other way round as well. Johannes Michalak, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Witten Herdecke University in Germany, has been looking at the association between body movements and mood. He found that if people walk in a more ‘happy’ style, their memories are more positive. 

(Photo: Eye-tracking software being used to detect Glaucoma. Credit: City University, London)

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