Reading Room
The reading room includes articles and videos of potential interest to consumers and medical professionals. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the NC Medical Board, its members and staff. Note: Some links may require subscriptions.
Duke Researchers Discover Our Eyes and Ears “Talk” to Each Other Through Subtle Sounds
NCMS
November 28, 2023
It’s a well-known fact that the body is interconnected, but a new study is magnifying just how closely eyes and ears work together. Publishing their findings last week, Duke University scientists discovered that they can pinpoint where someone is looking simply by listening to their ears. “You can actually estimate the movement of the eyes, the position of the target that the eyes are going to look at, just from recordings made with a microphone in the ear canal,” professor and study senior author Jennifer Groh said in a press release. Similarly, the team found that by knowing where someone was looking, they could predict the waveform of the subtle ear sound.
What to know about ongoing eye drop recalls
Medpage Today
November 20, 2023
Advocates are cheering FDA’s recent actions around problematic over-the-counter (OTC) eye drop products, arguing the issue has been neglected far too long. “Historically, nobody cared about over-the-counter drugs,” Rebecca Petris, president of the Washington state-based Dry Eye Foundation, told MedPage Today. Petris added that FDA’s recent actions have given advocates hope that the industry will be more strictly scrutinized going forward. “The good part here is we know the FDA is working really hard on eye drops now,” she said.
New treatment restores sense of smell in some people with long COVID
Medical News Today
November 20, 2023
A novel treatment could restore a normal sense of smell and taste in people with long COVID who have not responded to other therapies, a new study suggests. Alterations or outright loss of taste and smell are common COVID-19 symptoms, affecting about half of everyone who gets the novel coronavirus. Most of the time, these symptoms clearTrusted Source after four weeks, but for some people it takes months. And for some people with long COVID, distortions in the sense of smell and taste — called phantosmia and parosmia, respectively — related to COVID-19 can last far longer.
Respiratory viruses, thrown out of whack by Covid, appear to be falling back into seasonal order
STATNews
November 20, 2023
In the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic, something strange happened: For a year or two, illnesses that used to emerge like clockwork when fall and winter arrived — flu, RSV, and the myriad viruses that cause colds — did not sicken us. The cause now appears clear: The measures we took to avoid the new disease, including isolating and social distancing, muscled most other respiratory pathogens out of the cold-and-flu-season picture.
