206 Macular Degeneration

Search Engines

Medical news is also available in the news sections of commercial Internet search engines. See the health news page at Yahoo (http://dir.yahoo.com/Health/News_and_Media/), or you can use this Web site’s general news search page at http://news.yahoo.com/. Type in “macular degeneration” (or synonyms). If you know the name of a company that is relevant to macular degeneration, you can go to any stock trading Web site (such as http://www.etrade.com/) and search for the company name there. News items across various news sources are reported on indicated hyperlinks. Google offers a similar service at http://news.google.com/.

BBC

Covering news from a more European perspective, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) allows the public free access to their news archive located at http://www.bbc.co.uk/. Search by “macular degeneration” (or synonyms).

Newsletter Articles

Use the Combined Health Information Database, and limit your search criteria to “newsletter articles.” Again, you will need to use the “Detailed Search” option. Go directly to the following hyperlink: http://chid.nih.gov/detail/detail.html. Go to the bottom of the search page where “You may refine your search by.” Select the dates and language that you prefer. For the format option, select “Newsletter Article.” Type “macular degeneration” (or synonyms) into the “For these words:” box. You should check back periodically with this database as it is updated every three months. The following is a typical result when searching for newsletter articles on macular degeneration:

•The Right Foods for Preventing a Leading Cause of Blindness

Source: Tufts University Health and Nutrition Letter. 18(12). Special Supplement. February 2001.

Contact: 10 High Street, Suite 706, Boston, MA 02110. healthletter@tufts.edu www.healthletter.tufts.edu.

Summary: Lutein and zeaxanthin, found in dark green, leafy vegetables, may help reduce risk for macular degeneration, the leading cause of irreversible blindness among older Americans. Dr. Elizabeth Johnson of the Gastrointestinal Nutrition Laboratory at the Tufts Center on Aging fed non-green eaters a small serving of spinach every day for several months to see if the lutein in the spinach actually made it into the bloodstream and from there to the retina. These compounds appear in much higher concentrations in the eye than anywhere else in the body. The study results indicate that the lutein in food does end up in the retina of the eye. Another research project at the Oregon Health Sciences University is underway to determine if people in the early stages of macular degeneration can slow the progress of the disease by eating leafy greens. Already proven ways to reduce the risk for macular degeneration include reducing eye exposure to sunlight, not smoking, drinking in moderation, and (possibly) losing excess weight.

Periodicals and News 207

Academic Periodicals covering Macular Degeneration

Numerous periodicals are currently indexed within the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed database that are known to publish articles relating to macular degeneration. In addition to these sources, you can search for articles covering macular degeneration that have been published by any of the periodicals listed in previous chapters. To find the latest studies published, go to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed, type the name of the periodical into the search box, and click “Go.”

If you want complete details about the historical contents of a journal, you can also visit the following Web site: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/jrbrowser.cgi. Here, type in the name of the journal or its abbreviation, and you will receive an index of published articles. At http://locatorplus.gov/, you can retrieve more indexing information on medical periodicals (e.g. the name of the publisher). Select the button “Search LOCATORplus.” Then type in the name of the journal and select the advanced search option “Journal Title Search.”