Objectives

To examine the association of the 25-item National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire (NEI-VFQ-25) overall and specific scale scores with visual acuity, diabetic retinopathy, and other characteristics, in a cohort of persons with type 1 diabetes.

Design

Population-based cohort study.

Setting

An 11-county area in southern Wisconsin.

Participants

Six hundred two persons with diabetes whose conditions were diagnosed when they were younger than 30 years and who were currently taking insulin participated in baseline, 4-year, 10-year, and 14-year follow-up examinations.

Main outcome measures

An interview that consisted of the 25-item NEI-VFQ was completed. Visual acuity was measured by the Early Treatment of Diabetic Retinopathy Study (ETDRS) protocol and the presence and severity of retinopathy and macular edema were detected by masked grading of stereoscopic color fundus photographs using the modified Airlie House classification and the ETDRS retinopathy severity scheme.

Results

Univariate analyses revealed that the total NEI-VFQ-25 score was lower in persons who were older, had a longer duration of diabetes, higher glycosylated hemoglobin, were in renal failure, had a history of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, or amputation of a lower limb, had poorer visual acuity, more severe diabetic retinopathy, macular edema, glaucoma, cataract, abnormalities in tactile sensation or temperature sensitivity, smoked more total pack-years, led a more sedentary lifestyle, and had poor peak expiratory flow. In multivariate analyses, while controlling for the physical and mental component scores from the Medical Outcomes Survey 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey as measures of comorbidity, lower total NEI-VFQ-25 scores were independently associated with poorer visual acuity, more severe retinopathy, older age, history of loss of tactile sensation, and more total pack-years of cigarettes smoked.

Conclusions

In this cross-sectional study, the 25-item NEI-VFQ seems to be strongly associated with vision, independent of severity of retinopathy and other complications associated with type 1 diabetes. It may be a useful measure of health-related quality of life as it relates to vision in epidemiological studies and clinical trials in persons with diabetes.

Objective

To develop a brief symptom survey specific for persons with glaucoma, the Glaucoma Symptom Scale (GSS).

Design

Cross-sectional study of symptoms, functional impairment, and vision-targeted health-related quality of life among persons with glaucoma.

Patients

A sample of 147 persons with glaucoma among a broad range of treatment categories from 4 tertiary care glaucoma centers and 44 persons without eye disease enrolled from the same 4 centers.

Main outcome measures

Participants completed a modified version of the Ocular Hypertension Treatment Study 10-item symptom checklist. Participants also completed 2 vision-specific measures, the National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire and the VF-14. Participants underwent a clinical evaluation, including ocular and medical history, dilated ophthalmic examination, and Humphrey 24-2 automated visual field testing.

Results

The GSS has 2 underlying domains that demonstrate sufficient internal consistency reliability for between-group comparisons. The GSS discriminates well between persons with and without glaucoma. Additionally, tests of association with clinical markers of glaucoma severity support the clinical validity of the measure and tests of association with established vision-targeted measures provide evidence of construct validity.

Conclusion

The simplicity, brevity, and psychometric properties of the GSS support its use in clinical practice and research to quantify symptoms in patients with glaucoma and to assist in investigations concerning the effect of glaucoma and treatments.

Intravascular injections of fluorescent or biotinylated tomato lectin were tested to study labeling of vascular elements in laboratory mice. Injections of Lycopersicon esculentum agglutinin (tomato lectin) (50–100 µg/100 µl) were made intravascularly, through the tail vein, through a cannula implanted in the jugular vein, or directly into the left ventricle of the heart. Tissues cut for thin 10- to 12-µm cryostat sections, or thick 50- to 100-µm vibratome sections, were examined using fluorescence microscopy. Tissue labeled by biotinylated lectin was examined by bright field microscopy or electron microscopy after tissue processing for biotin. Intravascular injections of tomato lectin led to labeling of vascular structures in a variety of tissues, including brain, kidney, liver, intestine, spleen, skin, skeletal and cardiac muscle, and experimental tumors. Analyses of fluorescence in serum indicated the lectin was cleared from circulating blood within 2 min. Capillary labeling was apparent in tissues collected from animals within 1 min of intravascular injections, remained robust for about 1 h, and then declined markedly until difficult to detect 12 h after injection. Light microscopic images suggest the lectin bound to the endothelial cells that form capillaries and endothelial cells that line some larger vessels. Electron microscopic studies confirmed the labeling of luminal surfaces of endothelial cells. Vascular labeling by tomato lectin is compatible with a variety of other morphological labeling techniques, including histochemistry and immunocytochemistry, and thus appears to be a sensitive and useful method to reveal vascular patterns in relationship to other aspects of parenchymal development, structure, and function.

Objective

To test the reliability and validity of the 51-item Field Test Version of the National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire (NEI-VFQ) across 5 common chronic eye conditions.

Design

Prospective observational cohort study of persons with 1 of 5 chronic eye diseases who were scheduled for nonurgent visits in ophthalmology practices or had low vision from any cause, and a reference sample of persons without eye disease.

Setting

Six university-based ophthalmology practices and the National Eye Institute Clinical Center, Bethesda, Md.

Patients

Eligible participants had to have 1 of the following eye conditions: age-related cataracts, age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, primary open-angle glaucoma, cytomegalovirus retinitis, or low vision from any cause. Each of the 7 sites also enrolled persons in a reference sample. Reference sample participants had no evidence of underlying eye disease but were scheduled for either screening eye examinations or correction of refractive error. All eligible persons had to be aged 21 years or older, English speaking, and cognitively able to give informed consent and participate in a health status interview.

Measurements and main results

To provide the data needed to assess the reliability and validity of the 51-item NEI-VFQ, all subjects completed an interview that consisted of the 51-item NEI-VFQ, the Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey, and at least 1 measure of vision-targeted functional status. Estimates of internal consistency and test-retest reproducibility indicate that the 51-item NEI-VFQ is reliable. Tests of association with other scales and clinical variables support the construct validity of the survey.

Conclusions

In this cross-sectional study, the 51-item NEI-VFQ seems to be reliable and valid and should be a useful tool for group-level comparisons of vision-targeted, health-related quality of life in clinical research. Additionally, the psychometric properties of the NEI-VFQ were not influenced by the type or severity of the underlying eye disease, suggesting that the measure will provide reproducible and valid data when used across multiple eye conditions.

We examined the influence of glaucomatous visual field defects on vision-targeted and generic health-related quality of life. Vision-targeted and generic health status were assessed across 5 glaucoma treatment categories and a normal reference group from 5 tertiary care ophthalmology practices during regularly scheduled eye care visits. The sample consisted of 147 patients who were members of specific glaucoma treatment categories and 44 reference group patients. For patients with glaucoma, eligibility included a diagnosis of glaucoma at least 1 year prior to enrollment and no evidence of other eye disease. Participants completed 2 vision-targeted surveys, the National Eye Institute Visual Functioning Questionnaire and the VF-14, and a generic health-related quality of life measure, the Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short Form. Data from automated perimetry (Humphrey Field Analyzer 24-2, Humphrey Instruments, San Leandro, Calif) were used to generate Advanced Glaucoma Intervention Study scores for all participants. The Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short Form scores from glaucoma and reference group participants collected on a random half of the sample were similar. However, comparisons of the vision-targeted surveys demonstrated significant mean differences on 7 of 11 National Eye Institute Visual Functioning Questionnaire scales, and a trend toward significant differences for the VF-14 (P < .07 by linear regression). Greater visual field defects in the better eye were significantly associated with poorer National Eye Institute Visual Functioning Questionnaire scores (P < .05), as well as with worse VF-14 scores. These findings were most dramatic for patients with the most severe field loss in the better eye. Vision-targeted questionnaires were more sensitive than a generic health-related quality of life measure to differences between glaucoma and normal reference participants. Our findings indicate that self-reports of vision-targeted health-related quality of life are sensitive to visual field loss and may be useful in tandem with the clinical examination to fully understand outcomes of treatment for glaucoma.

During the shutdown of the CERN Large Hadron Collider in 2013-2014, an additional pixel layer was installed between the existing Pixel detector of the ATLAS experiment and a new, smaller radius beam pipe. The motivation for this new pixel layer, the Insertable B-Layer (IBL), was to maintain or improve the robustness and performance of the ATLAS tracking system, given the higher instantaneous and integrated luminosities realised following the shutdown. Because of the extreme radiation and collision rate environment, several new radiation-tolerant sensor and electronic technologies were utilised for this layer. This paper reports on the IBL construction and integration prior to its operation in the ATLAS detector.

A search for the rare decay D0→μ+μ- is performed using a data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 0.9fb-1, of pp collisions collected at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV by the LHCb experiment. The observed number of events is consistent with the background expectations and corresponds to an upper limit of B(D0→μ+μ-)<6.2(7.6)×10-9 at 90% (95%) confidence level. This result represents an improvement of more than a factor twenty with respect to previous measurements. © 2013 CERN.

We present the final combination of CDF and D0 measurements of cross sections for single-top-quark production in proton-antiproton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV. The data correspond to total integrated luminosities of up to 9.7 fb^{-1} per experiment. The t-channel cross section is measured to be σ_{t}=2.25_{-0.31}^{+0.29} pb. We also present the combinations of the two-dimensional measurements of the s- vs t-channel cross section. In addition, we give the combination of the s+t channel cross section measurement resulting in σ_{s+t}=3.30_{-0.40}^{+0.52} pb, without assuming the standard model value for the ratio σ_{s}/σ_{t}. The resulting value of the magnitude of the top-to-bottom quark coupling is |V_{tb}|=1.02_{-0.05}^{+0.06}, corresponding to |V_{tb}|>0.92 at the 95% C.L.

Drell-Yan lepton pairs produced in the process pp→â.,"+â.,"-+X through an intermediate γ∗/Z boson have an asymmetry in their angular distribution related to the spontaneous symmetry breaking of the electroweak force and the associated mixing of its neutral gauge bosons. The CDF and D0 experiments have measured the effective-leptonic electroweak mixing parameter sin2θefflept using electron and muon pairs selected from the full Tevatron proton-antiproton data sets collected in 2001-2011, corresponding to 9-10 fb-1 of integrated luminosity. The combination of these measurements yields the most precise result from hadron colliders, sin2θefflept=0.23148±0.00033. This result is consistent with, and approaches in precision, the best measurements from electron-positron colliders. The standard model inference of the on-shell electroweak mixing parameter sin2θW, or equivalently the W-boson mass MW, using the zfitter software package yields sin2θW=0.22324±0.00033 or equivalently, MW=80.367±0.017 GeV/c2.