Donations to Diabetes UK in 2008

Fundraising for Diabetes UK is a major part of our role as a group. In February we were able to donate £10,000 to them for use in two research projects.

The first £5,000 was donated to a project which aims to get a clearer image of sight loss. It is led by Dr. Nik Sheen at Cardiff University. A form of eye disease called retinopathy causes loss of vision in some people with diabetes but not in others. It's thought that when sight loss occurs, it is because of underlying changes in the light sensitive layer of the eye, the retina, and the layer below this, the choroid.

Using state of the art technology, Dr Sheen and his group will obtain images of patients' eyes in finer detail than has previously been possible to understand these changes associated with retinopathy. The new technology being used is called 'Ultra-high resolution 3-D Optical Coherence Tomography' and has the added advantage of not requiring physical contact with the eye, meaning the test is more comfortable for patients. Dr Sheen hopes that within around 5 - 10 years this technique will replace current invasive techniques used in hospital eye departments and in clinical trials.

The researchers will also, for the first time ever, be able to document the structural changes to the choroid of patients who undergo laser treatment for Diabetic Macular Oedema (DMO). It is hoped that this part of the study will reveal why current laser treatments to prevent sight loss associated with diabetes are not always successful.

In the future, these results could help predict which patients could benefit from treatment and could lead to the development of improved treatments.

The second donation of £5,000 went to a joint project with Kidney Research UK led by Dr Prabal Chaterjee at theUniversity of Brighton entitled Glucotoxicity and diabetes nephropathy: Investigating the role of superoxide dismutase and endoplasmic reticulum stress. This project aims to increase our understanding of the cellular mechanisms involved in diabetic nephropathy  (kidney failure) in the hope that it will lead to the development of new therapies.

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