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Query: UMLS:C0038379 (strabismus)
 9,317 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

A pilot study was undertaken to address the tolerance and efficacy of levodopa/carbidopa treatment for amblyopia in older amblyopic children who failed to respond to conventional occlusion therapy. Five amblyopic children, between the ages of 7 and 12 years, and two normal adults were given between 100 mg/25 mg and 400 mg/100 mg of levodopa/carbidopa, respectively, depending on body weight. A symptoms questionnaire was completed, with temperature, respiration, heart rate, and blood pressure taken periodically to assess tolerance. Blood samples were taken, via a heparin well, to assess the pharmacokinetics of levodopa, dopamine, noradrenaline, and DOPAC. Snellen visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, stereo acuity, and pattern VERs were measured periodically to assess efficacy. The results revealed a high prevalence of side effects including emesis and nausea (four of seven subjects). Pharmacokinetics revealed that maximum serum levels of levodopa occurred 30 minutes to 1 hour after drug ingestion and decreased by 50% after 2 to 4 hours. One hour after drug ingestion, Snellen visual acuity temporarily improved from an average of 20/159 to 20/83 in the amblyopic eyes. Contrast sensitivity and pattern VERs (10-minute checks) temporarily improved in both dominant and amblyopic eyes, whereas visual function remained stable in normal eyes. The improvements in visual function started to decrease 5 hours after drug ingestion. The results are discussed in the context of developing a therapeutic trial of levodopa/carbidopa for childhood amblyopia.
J Pediatr Ophthalmol Strabismus
PMID:Levodopa and childhood amblyopia. 143 16

In anesthetized and paralyzed cats, the normal alignment of the visual axes is disturbed by paralysis of the eye muscles. Thus, the separation between paired receptive fields of binocular cells in visual cortex is increased (paralysis squint). This increased separation is normally tolerated by the majority of visuocortical cells, about 80% of them being binocularly driven (Hubel and Wiesel 1962). It was shown previously that neuronal plasticity in visual cortex can be enhanced in both normal adult cats (Kasamatsu et al. 1979) and kittens (Kuppermann and Kasamatsu 1984) by intracortical microinfusion of noradrenaline (NA). In the present study we tested whether the usual range of disparity produced by the paralysis squint is sufficient to induce ocular dominance changes in visual cortex of adult cats when the neuronal plasticity is enhanced by NA. NA was continuously infused into visual cortex throughout the experiments. The period of the paralysis squint varied from experiment to experiment between 9 and 47 h. We found: (1) These short periods were sufficient to produce a marked reduction in the proportion of binocular cells. (2) The proportion decreased linearly with increasing the duration of the squint period at a rate of 0.17 per 10 h up to about 22 h. (3) At longer durations the average binocularity remained at about 0.30 and could not be further reduced in the present paradigm. (4) The binocularity seemed to decrease with increasing separation of paired receptive fields. (5) Binocularity increased again toward the normal value after optical correction of the squint. (6) The amount of increased binocularity was linearly correlated with the duration of the period after the squint correction. (7) The binocularity increased at a rate of 0.18 per 10 h, reaching the normal value in less than 30 h. We thus concluded that if visuocortical plasticity is maintained at a high level through the continuous infusion of NA it is possible to change the ocular dominance distribution in the mature visual cortex by manipulations of the alignment of the visual axes even in the acutely anesthetized and paralyzed condition.
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PMID:Reduced binocularity in the noradrenaline-infused striate cortex of acutely anesthetized and paralyzed, otherwise normal cats. 369 30