• National Advisory Eye Coucil members meet in June 2018

    National Advisory Eye Council Meeting

    Join us for the next meeting of the NAEC, a 12-member panel that advises National Eye Institute on ongoing strategic activities.

     

    Review the agenda

  • man wearing protective eye goggles

    June is Men’s Health Month!

    ATTENTION MEN: Protect your vision by getting a dilated eye exam. Make sure your eyes are healthy and you're seeing your best.

    Learn more

  • diagram of the eye with the lens, pupil and iris labeled

    June is Cataract Awareness Month

    A cataract is a clouding of the lens in the eye that affects vision. Most cataracts are related to aging and are very common in older people. By age 80, more than half of all Americans either have a cataract or have had cataract surgery.

    What you should know

Eye Conditions A to Z

Get information about common eye conditions and diseases.

Healthy Vision

Find out about eye exams and other ways to keep your eyes healthy.

Clinical Trials

Learn how NEI research helps prevent and treat eye disease and vision loss.

NEI for Kids

Make learning fun with NEI’s kid-friendly materials and videos.

En español

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NEI News

Retinal sections from a patient with retinitis pigmentosa show microglia (green) migrating into the photoreceptor layer (blue) once degeneration had begun. Inset shows microglia expressing C3 (red), which occurred in the context of photoreceptor degeneration.

Immune system can slow degenerative eye disease, NIH-led mouse study shows

A new study shows that the complement system, part of the innate immune system, plays a protective role to slow retinal degeneration in a mouse model of retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited eye disease.
2D MRI brain scans of patient TC and a healthy control child reveal word, place, and face specific regions. Patient TC shows all three on the right, and resected region on the left. Healthy control has all three on the left, plus face and place on the right.

Children’s brains reorganize after epilepsy surgery to retain visual perception

Children can keep full visual perception – the ability to process and understand visual information – after brain surgery for severe epilepsy, according to a study funded by the National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health.
Patients in the trial were closely monitored for changes in vision, said Carl W. Baker, M.D. (left). During the 2-year study, the detection of 2 lines of visual acuity loss at one visit or 1 line of visual acuity loss at two consecutive visits prompted aflibercept injections to be given to the people in the laser or observation groups. Photo credit: Brooksie Beard

Watchful waiting reasonable for patients with diabetic macular edema and good vision

People with good vision despite having center-involved diabetic macular edema can safely forego immediate treatment of their eye condition as long as they are closely monitored, and treatment begins promptly if vision worsens, according to clinical trial results.

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NEI: A leader in vision research

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Every year, NEI supports vision research through more than 1,500 research grants and training awards to scientists at more than 250 institutions across the country and around the world. NEI also conducts laboratory research and clinical trials.

Learn about NEI grants and funding Learn about research at NEI

Director's Initiatives

NEI Director: Paul A. Sieving, M.D., Ph.D.

The NEI Director’s Initiatives focus on challenging, high-impact areas of vision research. NEI’s current research priorities include: