London, April 8 (Inditop) Researchers have worked out a simple way to establish which premature infants are at risk of developing eye disease that can threaten their sight.
A new study suggests monitoring weekly weight development might replace the need for much more expensive ophthalmological examinations.
Every year around 1,000 Swedish infants are born more than two months prematurely. Pre-term infants are at increased risk of damage to several important organs, including the brain, lungs, guts and eyes.
Around 350 of these infants develop eye disease like retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) which, if left untreated, can threaten their sight. Ten percent, or around a 100 of the pre-term infants need the same treatment to prevent blindness.
“In the past 50 years it has been routine for all infants born very prematurely to be examined several times by ophthalmologists to identify children who need treatment for ROP, but this expensive method of screening can now perhaps be replaced by a considerably simpler and cheaper method…,” said Ann Hellstr�m, professor at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
The research team has previously identified another important link between pre-term birth and vascular disease in the eye, the protein IGF-1, which is strongly linked to the infant’s weight gain.
“However, one would prefer not to take any blood samples from the pre-term infants, and therefore we wanted to investigate whether our surveillance model worked if we only used the infant’s weight. We found that it works extremely well,” said Hellstr�m.
The new WINROP model is now to be evaluated in a large British study and also on data from Brazilian and American infants. The material will be analysed during the summer of 2009, said a Sahlgrenska release.
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