INTRODUCTION Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a leading cause of irreversible serious vision damage in persons over 50 years of age. In treating AMD many medicaments are applied such as inhibitors of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), have been very carefully included over the last few years after a series of study research. AIMS To analyze the past methods of treatment, disc...

INTRODUCTION Diagnostic approaches to patients with a pleural effusion must be precise because many procedures depend on the nature of the fluid in the effusion. To date, no biochemical test is considered an appropriate alternative to Light's criteria. This study compared the absolute pleural cholesterol (PC) level and the pleural cholesterol/serum cholesterol (PC/SC) ratio with Light's criteri...

PURPOSE To evaluate plasma levels of endothelin-1 (ET-1) and nitric oxide (NO) in patients with exudative age-related macular degeneration (AMD). METHODS In this study, ET-1 levels, as well as nitrite plus nitrate concentrations as an indicator of plasma NO level, were measured in the plasma of 20 subjects with exudative AMD and compared with 20 healthy age and sex matched controls. RESULTS...

PURPOSE Variants in the complement factor H (CFH) gene have been reported to be associated with age-related macular degeneration (AMD). We conducted a case-control association study to investigate the association of 6 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in CFH with exudative AMD in the Chinese population. METHODS We recruited 163 cases and 244 controls, all ethnic Chinese, with complete op...

A visual-visual dual computer task was designed to test the effect of the thermal environment on dual task performance. The temperatures selected for testing were 20 and 35 degrees C Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT). 34 volunteers were randomly assigned to 1 of the 2 temperature conditions. Individual differences in single task performance were controlled by equating the baselines of single ta...

PURPOSE To determine whether the risk for nonexudative and exudative age-related macular degeneration (AMD) varies for Americans of different Asian ethnicities. METHODS Claims data from a large national United States managed care network were reviewed to identify Asian Americans age 40 and older who had ≥ 1 eye care visits from 2001 to 2007. International Classification of Disease (ICD-9CM) b...