Do you have early treatment advice?

By Lim Kim Lan

An MDS member

Has anyone been given advice from an opthalmologist about early treatment regimes apart from not straining the eyes, taking nutritious food for eyes, etc? In my own experience, I would consider myself fully predisposed to MD since one of my eyes has been diagnosed with Myopic MD.

Yet no one (I have visited 3 different prominent specialists) has offered me any "early treatment regiment" so as to arrest MD developing in my remaining myopic eye (not yet affected by MD). All have just dismissed me with the info that they "can't do anything since yours is a "MYOPIC MD".

They merely prescribed some over-the- counter-eye drops for dry eyes and invited me to come back when when my eyes deteriorate!

Would love to hear from anyone with other experiences. Thank you.

Lim Kim Lan

Stem cells the answer?

Check out this informative video on how stem cells could be the answer to cure macular degeneration.

New test to predict AMD

Soon, a doctor could find out whether you are likely to have macular degeneration even before you have any inkling of the eye disease.

Scientists have developed a new test to identify people who are genetically predisposed to AMD, opening the way to earlier detection and treatment.

The test is called Macular Risk and has been developed by ArcticDX, a Canadian company, and Cambridge Enterprise, the commercial arm of Cambridge University. It will be available worldwide next year.

During the test, swabs of saliva will be analysed to look for genes which indicate that a patient has a high probability of developing the disease.

ArcticDX president Greg Hines said: "This will be the first time that clinicians will be able to diagnose the condition before symptoms arise.This provides the opportunity for targeted patient education and routine eye examinations that offer early detection and disease management.

"Macular Degeneration is a disease that can be arrested but it is not reversible. It is important to offer earlier treatment regimens that may arrest the disease before significant vision loss occurs."

ArcticDX has secured license for a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) located in the complement C3 gene that has been shown to be a predictive indicator for the genetic diagnosis of AMD.

This breakthrough came after six years of research. The manufacturers said that the ideal candidate for the test would be someone in their 50s with a family history of the condition.

New Exco for MDS

MDS held its first Annual General Meeting today at the Alexandra Hospital, with President Sam Fong presenting a report of the society's activities in the last year.

The society has a membership of more than 150 and events organised ranged from regular sharing sessions to talks by experts, as well as a roadshow and computer tutorial.

MDS has also been a key partner and supporter of the annual nationwide AMD Awareness Week in Singapore.

MDS also elected a new Executive Committee to serve a two-year term from July 2008 to June 2010. Sam Fong, Sharon Siddique, Peh Shing Huei and Anny Leow remained in the Exco, with Lee Soo Mien, Doreen Heng and Lim Hsiu Mei coming onboard. Doris Peh and Evelyn Chew have also been chosen as honorary auditors for the new term.

Below (from left): Shing Huei, Anny, Doris, Doreen, Sharon, Sam, Soo Mien. Hsiu Mei and Evelyn are not in the picture.


Former Exco member Steven Lo declined to stand for re-election and the MDS would like to express its sincere gratitude to him for his time and service. In particular, the computer tutorials he conducted both at his home and at the SNEC last month have been well-received and most helpful.

The new Exco will choose its office bearers of president, secretary and treasurer after their first meeting. Details will be posted here.

Revolutionary Microscopic Needles

Researchers in Georgia, United States have pioneered a new technique that effectively delivers drugs to the eyes using microscopic needles. It could be a big boost for macular degeneration patients.

These new needles penetrate the eye only as deep as half a millimetre into the eye tissue. This means that they do not penetrate far enough to cause as much damage as traditional needles. As a result, they can be applied to the eye using only local anaesthetic.

Traditional delivery methods such as eye drops have difficulty in efficiently delivering drugs to the back of the eye, and ordinary injections are invasive as the needle penetrates across eye tissues. Repeated injections with regular needles can also result in other serious complications to vision.

To read more, click here.

Painting macular degeneration

One of the biggest problems that macular degeneration sufferers confronts is trying to explain to the people around them just what they are suffering from. While simple blindness is easily understood, the degenerative nature and partial blindness of MD makes it less clear.

What does it mean to lose central vision and only have peripheral view? How does the world look like through the eyes of an MD sufferer?

To help answer these questions, a young artist in Scotland has painted portraits of macular degeneration patients, to show how MD sufferers see the themselves.

Mr Adam Hahn (below), whose late grandmother suffered from AMD, photographed each sitter and manipulated the image to represent how they would see it.

He then showed it to them and, by using their remaining peripheral vision, they suggested adjustments.

One of the sitters was Mr Don Curran, the past chairman of the charity AMD Alliance International. He called the portraits (below) "outstanding".

“One of the biggest difficulties we have lies in explaining its (macular degeneration's) impact to others. I spend a lot of time trying to show how difficult it is living with central-vision blindness, and how the condition varies between each individual,” he says.

“I am about to speak at an international congress in Hong Kong and I am going to use some of Adam's portraits on PowerPoint. Even clinicians and pharmaceutical companies don't understand how it can cause such depression. Simple blindness is far easier to comprehend than this kind of partial-sightedness.”

To read more, click here for the very well-written article on The Times of London.

Biting into Assistive Technology

This Jaws does not bite. Unlike the infamous sharks in Spielberg's blockbuster, Jaws the screen-reader software offers visually-impaired people the opportunity to work independently and traverse the wondrous world wide web with ease.

Dr Wong Meng Ee, president of the Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) Society and who is visually impaired, showed today the workings of software Jaws, demonstrating its benefits and user-friendliness.

He typed in Microsoft Word and with each letter, Jaws echoed it back to him. And to audible gasps from the crowd of 60, he even set up a table in Word and effortlessly keyed in words into the individual cells of the table.

"Jaws is very useful for office work, since many of us use Word and Excel almost every day," said Meng Ee, who is also an assistant professor at the Nanyang Technological University. "It has allowed me to work in a mainstream environment, using things which are used by my colleagues. So I can read all documents, papers and e-mails sent to me."

He was speaking at a talk on Assistive Technology, organised by the Macular Degeneration Society, the RP Society and Glaucoma Patients Association. This is the second joint effort by the three organisations this year.

Getting the news, now

Besides using Jaws on Word and Excel, Meng Ee also used it to surf the Internet, searching for information through Google.

But while a sighted person can very quickly get to the information he wants on the website, going through Jaws takes a little longer because the software reads out all the text on screen. Still, with a little practice and some familiarity of certain websites, it gets faster and easier.

More importantly, Jaws allows a visually-impaired person to go online and "read" the news he wants, connecting to the world instantly and on his own demand. "In the past, we have to wait for someone to convert newspapers to braille and that takes time," he said. "By the time it is ready, it is old news. These days, we want news instantly."

Scanning documents

Since Jaws can only read out text that is already in the computer, that means that printed documents would be out of its reach. But he refers the audience to a product known as OpenBook, which scans printed documents and converts it into text format in computers, allowing Jaws to then do its magic.

"You can scan it, go for a cup of tea, come back and it is done. You can even save it into MP3 format," he shared.

Money no enough

But there is a downside to these products - cost. Jaws cost about S$2,500 and OpenBook is about S$1,500. The American company selling these products does not deliver to Singapore and so those who are interested would have to order through the Singapore Associated for the Visually Handicapped (Tel: 6251-4331).

For those who are unable to afford it, he suggests approaching the National Council of Social Service, which has an Assistive Technology Fund. It subsidises up to 90 per cent of the costs of the products. (AT Fund secretariat can be reached at 6210-2677 and ncss_rad@ncss.gov.sg)

He urged people to embrace assistive technology and invest in it, noting that an American colleague had remarked that while Singaporeans go for the biggest TVs and the latest mobile phones, we stint on the technology which can really change lives.

Increasing font sizes and magnifiers

Besides Meng Ee, MDS secretary Sharon Siddique and Exco member Steven Lo also offered tips on how to make technology work for the visually handicapped. After years experimenting with his computer settings, Steven showed how users can enlarge all the font sizes on screen, from the desktop icons to text on websites. This is to make it easier for MD sufferers who are no longer able to read small fonts.

Sharon, on the other hand, showed new magnifiers which are not only user-friendly, but portable and robust. She said: "Many of us here today do not need these equipment yet. But it is good to know that down the road, there are these innovations which can help with our lives. It gives me comfort."

* What is your view on assistive technology? Have you used any before? Share with other MDS members your experience. Click on the Comments tab.