Elias leads research team in EBioMedicine commentary
A team of researchers led by Merrill “Pete” Elias of the Department of Psychology at the University of Maine published commentary in the Feb. 13 online issue of the journal EBioMedicine citing the importance of a new population-based study on the vision impairment and eye diseases in persons with chronic kidney disease (Wong et all., 2016). In their commentary, “The Eye is the Window to the Kidney and Brain,” Elias and coauthors Rachael Torres and Adam Davey, both of Temple University, note the potential for future studies to similarly examine visual and cognitive outcomes. Visual acuity and other indices of visual function are rarely reported or analyzed in the context of cognitive studies, say the researchers. Analyzing ocular diseases and cognition “would help us understand the extent to which cognitive deficits in the elderly are, in part, a reflection of poor vision rather than cognitive impairment,” say Elias, Torres and Davey.