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Remembrance of things past
His eyes circled by rings he rarely sleeps. At times he wakes up with a start from terrifying dreams, nightmares whose nature Isabelle would not tell us, but they seem as atrocious as those as which he afflicted the Verlaine of London, “the eyes torn out,” “the heart filled with rums.” Rimbaud is no longer a text at this moment but a body. (Jean-Luc Steinmetz. Arthur Rimbaud. Presence of an Enigma. New York: Welcome Rain Publishing, 2001:374)
Retinal problem associated with vigabatrin
Vigabatrin is an effective first line drug for the treatment of many seizure disorders. It is an inhibitor of GABA transaminase and thus produces elevated GABA in the brain and perhaps the retina. In adults visual field loss associated with vigabatrin has now been reported in up to 50–70% of patients. Many neurologists have stopped using vigabatrin. A report from Oman suggests that in children the toxicity is equally devastating. In a series of 21 children using vigabatrin, primarily for the treatment of infantile spasms, 16 of them developed abnormal visual evoked potentials and four developed abnormal retinal findings on ophthalmoscopy. Regrettably, electroretinography and electro-oculography were not performed in these patients. (Archives of Disease in Childhood2001;85:1–3)
Obesity and age related eye diseases
Although the precise aetiology of age related macular degeneration is yet unknown some risk factors have been identified. Participants of the Beaver Dam Study at 5 years' follow up demonstrated that there was an increased risk for age related eye disease in women with an increased waist to hip ratio rather than just the body index alone. It is …