Collaboration with the Aravind Eye Hospitals in Southern India is expanded and strengthened by a recent visit to India in November 2010
The Aravind Eye Hospitals in southern India were founded by Dr. Venkataswamy in 1976 with a mission to prevent blindness. Beginning in Madurai, Aravind has expanded to include hospitals in Theni, Tirunelveli, Coimbatore and Pondicherry. The Aravind Eye Hospitals are making huge strides in preventing blindness in India by taking care of a staggering number of eye patients (over 2.5 million patient visits and over 300,000 eye surgeries per year).
The Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Iowa has had a long collaboration with Aravind to study genetic causes of eye disease. More recently, Dr. John Fingert visited the Aravind Eye Hospitals and the laboratories of the Aravind Medical Research Foundation (AMRF) to strengthen and extend this collaboration.
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A large family in the village Kayalpatanam with 350 members with a heritable form of glaucoma was identified by Dr Mohideen Abdul Kader. In November 2010, a group of Aravind glaucoma doctors (Dr. Mohideen Abdul Kader, Dr. Krishanadas, and Dr. Ramakrishanan) and scientists (Dr. Sundaresan and Dr. Fingert) examined and enrolled 126 family members in a genetic study to find the gene that causes their family’s eye disease. |
| Dr. Mohideen Abdul Kader examines a patient with Glaucoma. |
Dr. Sundaresan and his team of researchers in Madurai at the AMRF are collaborating with the Glaucoma Genetics Lab in Iowa to find the gene that causes Glaucoma in this family from Kayalpatanam.
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Dr. Sundaresan discusses the genetics of |
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 Glaucoma specialist Dr. Krishnadas |
| Dr. Fingert examines one of the younger family members. |
