Medicine

Healthy volunteers needed for neurology study

Having a better understanding of how the eye reacts to flickering light may help doctors to more fully understand the way blood vessels behave throughout the body. Healthy volunteers are needed to help researchers at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center examine how the responses of blood vessels in the eye to flickering light compare from one day to another.

Blood vessels in the eyes may show what happens with blood vessels throughout the body. This study will measure the blood flow in the vessels in the eye and the arm to see if there is a measurable relationship between them.

Eligible participants will be asked to visit Penn State Hershey Medical Center on two nonconsecutive days to have an eye dilated, look into an eye device while heart rate and blood pressure are monitored, and then be exposed to a series of flickering lights. They will also have blood flow measurements in the arm using ultrasound.

You may be eligible to participate if you are age 21 to 65, do not smoke, have a BMI less than 30 kg/m2, and have no history of hypertension; cardiovascular, pulmonary, or peripheral vascular disease; renal, prostate, and urinary retention disease; glaucoma or age-related macular degeneration.

Call Julia Slocomb at (717) 531-0003 extension 287693 for more information.

Dr. Kerstin Bettermann of Penn State Hershey Neurology is the study director.
 

Last Updated July 16, 2009

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