This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
UH professor awarded NIH grant for myopia research
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Earl L. Smith, OD, PhD, professor in vision development at the University of Houston and dean of the College of Optometry, was recently awarded a $1.9 million grant from the National Eye Institute to provide a better understanding of the causes of myopia and to develop treatment strategies.
"Intense educational demands and spending more time inside than outside are things we know contribute to becoming myopic,” Smith said in a press release from the university. “In situations where there are high educational demands, people are very likely to become nearsighted. I'll use our optometry students as an example. About half of them become more myopic during their 4 years of school here."
By effectively changing the focus of the eye, Smith’s research shows it is possible to change the way the eye grows, according to the release. While a cure or myopia reversal is out of the question for now, it can be slowed down.
Smith’s research aims to determine how visual experience affects refractive development, to characterize mechanisms that regulate eye growth and to explore new pharmaceutical approaches to eliminate myopia, according to the release.
The grant will allow Smith and his colleagues to expand upon previous research that showed promise in answering questions about environmental factors that could have an impact on eye growth and lead to nearsightedness.
The first half of their research will look at how low light levels and the color of lighting indoors affect eye growth, according to the release. The other half of the project will be to test the safety and efficacy of a new pharmaceutical agent that has shown promise in previous studies to slow the development of myopia. The results will potentially provide the scientific foundation for new treatment and management strategies for the most common forms of nearsightedness.
A clinic dedicated to using strategies that slow the progression of nearsightedness in children will be opening within the UH College of Optometry's University Eye Institute by the end of the summer, according to the release.
Source: www.uh.edu/new-events/