Green tea to fight against eye diseases

FRIDAY, Feb. 19 (HealthDay News) -- Substances found in green tea work their way into the tissues of the eye and could protect against common eye diseases like glaucoma, researchers say.

The findings, published in the current issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, suggest that the substances, known as catechins, are absorbed by the lens, retina and other parts of the eye. Catechins are antioxidants thought to protect the body against damage from oxygen.

According to Chi Pui Pang and colleagues from the department of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, it wasn't known if catechins make their way from the mouth to the gastrointestinal system to the eyes.

The study authors gave green tea to rats and then tested their eyes to see if catechins affected them. They did, reducing oxidative stress in the eye for up to 20 hours.

"Our results indicate that green tea consumption could benefit the eye against oxidative stress," the authors said.

Eye colour may help forensic investigations

Scientists have identified three new genes that determine subtle variations in human eye colour -- clues that could help forensic investigators using DNA left at a crime scene to track down criminal suspects.

 Researchers from the Erasmus University Medical Centre Rotterdam in the Netherlands used a technique called a genome-wide association study, which scans gene maps, to analyse the eye colour of about 6,000 Dutch volunteers.

The colours were then digitally quantified and collated using high-resolution photographs of the whole eye, and the scientists found that human eye colour varies in many more ways than previously thought.

Previous studies on the genetics of human eye colour used broad trait information such as "blue", "green", and "brown", the researchers, led by Manfred Kayser, wrote in the study.

But this study showed that variation in eye colour runs in a continuous grading from the lightest blue to the darkest brown."These findings are of relevance for future forensic applications where appearance prediction from biological material found at crime scenes may provide investigative leads to trace unknown persons," Kayser said.

Kayser's team pinpointed three new genes which they said were "significantly associated" with quantitative eye colour.

Together with previously identified ones, these three genes could explain more than 50% of eye colour variance, they said — the highest accuracy so far achieved in using genes to predict a complex human trait.

EDITOR "these guys always find something always"

Todays Question "What's your color of your eyes"

Optical Illusion-Home

Sculpture Art at National Gallery Sculpture Garden in Washington DC.
Created by Roy Lichtenstein
American, 1923-1997
House I, 1996/1998
Fabricated and painted aluminum
Gift of The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation 1998.147.1

Is your Child suffering from Convergence Insufficiency??