JDF and NASA Co-sponsor Eye Disease Workshop Washington, D.C., March 30, 1999—Today, the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation (JDF) and the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) begin a two-day workshop on the latest in diabetic retinopathy—the leading cause of adult blindness in the U.S. This workshop’s program will provide a forum for discussion and review of state-of-the-art diagnosis, treatment, and understanding of diabetic retinopathy and for setting future directions for diabetic retinopathy research. The workshop will also include discussion of how to use measures in the eye as a means to monitor diabetes in patients. The workshop—co-sponsored by JDF and NASA in collaboration with the National Eye Institute (NEI), National Institute on Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), and the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke (NINDS)—brings together leading clinical researchers, scientists, engineers, and representatives of universities, businesses, federal laboratories, and other agencies. Research Triangle Institute (RTI) is helping plan and conduct the workshop. Discussions will include focus on six critical areas identified as priorities for research, including the development of a low-cost, portable technique for screening people with diabetes for eye disease; noninvasive techniques to measure retinal blood flow; techniques for high-resolution retinal imaging; techniques for noninvasive compositional analysis within the eye; how to enable pervasive digital imaging to replace existing retinal photography; and MRI/NMR techniques to be applied to the retina. Diabetic retinopathy is an eye disease characterized by vision impairment or blindness caused by the leakage of blood and other fluids from retinal blood vessels. All people with diabetes are at risk, and approximately 90% will develop some degree of retinopathy within their lifetime. A full summary report of the workshop will be available on this site in mid-April. For media inquires, please contact Julie Kimbrough, JDF Manager of Media Relations (212-479-7536). Further information on the workshop is available at http://www.rti.org/technology/nasa-jdf/Retinopathy/
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