Eye disease in diabetes and endocrinology

Professor Graham Leese is an NHS consultant at Ninewells Hospital Dundee and former lecturer at the University of Liverpool.  He has paralleled research interests and clinical developments especially in diabetic eye disease with screening, and diabetic foot disease with risk stratification.  He has interests in the epidemiology of these areas in addition to thyroid and parathyroid disease.  Professor Leese was involved in establishing retinal screening programmes in Scotland and the UK as a whole.  He has published over 250 papers in these areas.  Over the years he has been part of the Scottish Diabetes Group in a number or roles, including chairman of the Foot subgroup, Scottish Diabetes Research Network (as chairman), Clinical Team Leader and MCN chairman locally. He is NRS clinical lead for metabolic and endocrine research and is previous advisor to the CMO in general medicine and diabetes and endocrinology.  He has developed and established local clinical services in diabetes, endocrinology and osteoporosis.  He is also Associate Postgraduate Dean for Broad Based Training, and is past-chair of the SCE exam board, and current chair of the standard setting committee.

Mr Tom Eke has been a Consultant Ophthalmologist at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals for nearly 20 years.  His main interests are conditions affecting the optic nerves and visual fields (i.e. glaucoma, neuro-ophthalmology). He spends a lot of time looking at visual field plots that are done by optometrists (opticians) or in the hospital eye service, and a lot of time looking at the back of peoples’ eyes.  Most of the ‘non-diabetes endocrinology’ eye patients come through his clinic, so he has a lot of experience in assessing visual fields and fundi to find and monitor endocrinology patients.  He also sits on the DVLA’s national advisory panel (vision and driving). Mr Eke’s presentation should help you to understand visual field plots.  He will tell you how to get a good view of the optic discs with your ophthalmoscope, and how to understand what you are seeing.

Dr Fabiana D’Esposito (MD, PhD) qualified summa cum laude as a medical doctor and then as an ophthalmologist at University of Naples “Federico II” (Italy). She completed her PhD in London at the Institute of Ophthalmology, Department of Molecular Genetics (UCL), under the supervision of Prof. Shomi Bhattacharya focusing on the molecular aspects of inherited eye diseases. In her working experience, she has been a post-doc research assistant at Imperial College in the Department of Molecular Genetics, School of Medicine and then coordinator of the Ophthalmic Genetics Section at CEINGE-Advanced Biotechnologies Institute, Naples, where she obtained the qualification as “Expert Researcher” by the Italian Ministry of Research and University. At present, she is an honorary senior lecturer in Ophthalmic Genetics at Imperial College and a consultant at the ICORG Unit, Western Eye Hospital, Imperial NHS Trust (London, UK). She is a visiting professor of Ophthalmic Genetics at University of Naples “Federico II”, and at University of Salerno (Italy). She is an advisor for the MAGI-Euregio laboratory of genetics (Bolzano, Italy) and for numerous ophthalmic clinics across Italy where she is counselling for patients affected by genetic eye conditions. Dr Fabiana D’Esposito is specialised in the study and in the management of inherited eye diseases (diagnosis, phenotype-genotype correlations and molecular characterization).

Adi Latif is an accessibility consultant at AbilityNet. He empowers organisations on how to best design an inclusive product/ service which can be used by all, increasing market share and providing disabled people equal access. He believes that good design enables and empowers people and bad design disables. He’s experienced inaccessibility strategy, accessibility user testing and training.  He also has over 15 years of experience in using screen-reader technology for the blind.  Previous experience includes running two start-ups, the world’s first blind professional snowboarder and working for Accenture Global management consultancy. AbilityNet is a charity who works with large and small organisations from all sectors to improve the usability and accessibility of digital products and services.

Colin Dayan trained in medicine at University College, Oxford, and Guy’s and Charing Cross Hospitals in London, before obtaining a PhD in the immunology of Graves’ Disease in Laboratory of Marc Feldmann. He spent a year as an endocrine fellow at the Massachussetts General Hospital in Boston, USA before completing his specialist training in diabetes and endocrinology, lecturing in Bristol. He became a consultant senior lecturer in medicine (diabetes/endocrinology) at the University of Bristol in 1995 and Head of Clinical Research at the Henry Wellcome Laboratories for Integrative Neuroscience and Endocrinology in Bristol in 2002.

In 2010, he was appointed as Chair of Clinical Diabetes and Metabolism and Head of Section at Cardiff University. He served as Director of the Institute of Molecular and Experimental Medicine in 2011-2015. In 2020 he was appointed as Senior Clinical Researcher, Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford as a joint post with Cardiff. He has a long-established interest in translational research in the immunopathology of type 1 diabetes (T1D), currently conducting early phase clinical trials in the development of antigen-specific immunotherapy as well as leading multicentre phase 2 studies. His clinical interests in diabetes include management of poor compliance in type 1 diabetes, public health measures in the prevention of type 2 diabetes and models of community care in diabetes.

He has been part of 2 major EU FP7 programme grants in T1D a member of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Medical and Scientific Committee and the Welsh Diabetes Research Unit. He currently leads the Clinical Engagement and Training Core of the Diabetes UK funded T1D UK immunotherapy Consortium which aims to coordinate and support combined efforts to bring immunotherapy for T1D into clinical practice. He also chairs the UK Clinical Studies Group for the prevention, targets and therapies in T1D.

Tas Braithwaite is a Consultant Ophthalmologist specialising in inflammatory eye disease (uveitis and scleritis) and neuro-ophthalmology. She takes a particular interest in the holistic care of patients who have vision or eye problems resulting from systemic autoimmune, autoinflammatory and infectious diseases, and manages patients requiring systemic therapy including immunosuppression and biologic therapy.

She holds a dual appointment as Adjunct and Honorary Senior Lecturer in the School of Immunology and Microbial Sciences, and the School of Life Course Sciences, Kings College London. Her research programme aims to deliver predictive, preventive, personalised and participatory medicine to her patients, and to inform evidence-based practice internationally. Working with a network of global collaborators, she is developing tools to better quantify the impacts of eye disease on outcomes including quality of life, and advancing insights into the epidemiology of inflammatory eye diseases and associated risk factors. She serves as a Contact Editor for Cochrane Eyes and Vision and contributed a chapter on, ‘The Eye in General Medicine,’ to the Oxford Textbook of Medicine.

This presentation aims to provide a very brief overview of the many different ways in which drugs can affect the eyes and visual system.

Pearse Keane is a consultant ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital, London, and an associate professor at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology. He is originally from Ireland and received his medical degree from University College Dublin (UCD), graduating in 2002.

In 2016, he initiated a formal collaboration between Moorfields Eye Hospital and Google DeepMind, with the aim of developing artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms for the earlier detection and treatment of retinal disease. In August 2018, the first results of this collaboration were published in the journal, Nature Medicine. In May 2020, he jointly led work, again published in Nature Medicine, to develop an early warning system for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), by far the commonest cause of blindness in many countries.

In October 2019, he was included on the Evening Standard Progress1000 list of most influential Londoners and in June 2020, he was profiled in The Economist.

Professor Sivaprasad is a medical retina consultant and a clinical researcher in retinal vascular diseases and age-related macular degeneration. Her key research areas are retinal imaging markers, clinical trials, experimental medicine. She is the Editor in Chief of EYE and has over 300 peer-reviewed publications to her credit