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Increased federal funding for NEI, glaucoma research requested

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WASHINGTON — Increased federal funding for vision research and for the treatment of glaucoma were the subject of two congressional events here last week.

In a congressional briefing by the National Alliance for Eye and Vision Research (NAEVR), Christopher A. Girkin, MD, MSPH, said glaucoma is not only the leading cause of irreversible blindness among blacks in the United States, but it also progresses more rapidly and develops 10 years earlier in blacks than whites. Structural differences in the optic nerve head and the lamina cribrosa seem to be responsible for making blacks more susceptible to glaucomatous damage than whites, Dr. Girkin said.

Dr. Girkin and colleagues are working on detection strategies to diagnose glaucoma earlier, he said. One promising technology is the confocal scanning laser.

“We can see quantitatively over time how the nerve is changing,” Dr. Girkin explained. “We’re using bench science and seeing how [we can apply] it to patients.”

The current annual funding for the National Eye Institute is less than 1% of the annual $68 billion cost of treating visual disorders and disabilities, according to the NAEVR.

Congressman Artur Davis, D-Ala., said at the briefing that legislators are unaware of the need for funding for vision research, especially as ophthalmology competes with other specialties for federal dollars.

The day after the congressional briefing, Stephen J. Ryan, MD, president of NAEVR, testified before a House subcommittee on health appropriations. On behalf of the vision research community, Dr. Ryan requested fiscal 2006 funding for the NEI at $711 million and for the National Institutes of Health at $30 billion, which would be 6% increases over fiscal 2005 levels.

“Although NAEVR recognizes that Congress faces tremendous challenges at home and abroad, we join the community of support for medical research in requesting NIH funding at $30 billion to maintain the momentum of discovery,” Dr. Ryan said, according to a NAEVR press release. He noted that NEI-funded research has led to an approved drug therapy treatment for age-related macular degeneration, as well as the recent discovery of a gene associated with a person’s risk for developing the condition.