Tonia Rex, PhD, and colleagues at the Vanderbilt Eye Institute are working to uncover how best to treat ocular trauma, the fourth leading cause of blindness worldwide and a growing concern for the Department of Defense, which recently approved Rex for a $1.5 million grant to further study the impact that pressurized airwave blasts have on the eye. The three-year grant, “Neuroprotective Strategies for the Treatment of Blast-Induced Optic Neuropathy” is making way for discoveries that can lead to treatments for vision loss due to trauma.

Rex, associate professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences noted many wounded warriors are injured in IED blasts. “There are estimates that upward of 75 percent of veterans with mild blast-induced traumatic brain injuries have vision problems. We need to understand what is causing the effects on vision,” she said.

In an effort to figure out the eye’s response to blast injuries and to assist with developing treatments for optic neuropathy, Rex worked with engineers to recreate an over-pressurized airwave to simulate the force air from cannons and IEDs. “We were able to assess vision, as well as molecular and cellular level changes to the retina and optic nerve over a course of time. We now have a pretty good idea of what events may be contributing to the vision loss,” she said. “We will now take advantage of what we learned and target the pathways that we think are contributing to the delayed vision loss in order to hopefully preserve vision after trauma. Anything we learn may be directly applicable to blunt trauma as well,” Rex said.