(Matt O’Connor/ Health Imaging) — Queen’s University Belfast researchers found the eye may be a critical indicator for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) along with a host of other neurodegenerative diseases.
Published in the Journal of Ophthalmic Research, the study showed peripheral retinal imaging, using ultra-wide field (UWF) technology, can be used to visualize changes in the peripheral retina that are associated with these debilitating diseases.
“These exciting research results suggests that our original hypothesis was right and wide field eye imaging could indeed help monitoring disease progression in patients with AD,” said corresponding author, Imre Lengyel, PhD, with Queens’ University’s School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences in the U.K. in a release.
Lengyel and colleagues took UWF images of 59 patients with AD and 48 healthy participants to determine a baseline. The entire cohort was invited for a follow-up imaging after two years.
One significant finding from the study was that those with Alzheimer’s had a higher than normal appearance of drusen—yellow spots that show up on retinal images in people with AD. Drusen are little deposits of fat, proteins and minerals that, in small numbers, are harmless, but as their numbers increase lead to retinal degeneration, according to the release. (…)