A Clinical Investigation of the Performance and Safety of Epaderm®, an Emollient Cream.

INTRODUCTION: Emollients provide an occlusive barrier for dry and atopic skin, retain moisture, protect it from irritants, and form the basis of eczema treatment. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: A prospective interventional single arm study to evaluate the performance and safety of Epaderm® Cream, an emollient and cleanser containing 25% (w/w) paraffin and 5% (w/w) glycerine (thereafter, an emollient cream), in patients with dry skin conditions. The primary outcome measure was participant evaluation of skin moisturisation after treatment with an emollient cream for up to 4 weeks. Secondary outcome measures included: evaluation of skin softness using a questionnaire and of pruritus on a visual analogue scale (VAS); clinician assessment of xerosis using Overall Dry Skin (ODS) score and measurement of skin hydration using a non-invasive device (MoistureMeterEpiD, Delfin Technologies) at each visit. Sign test and Wilcoxon signed rank test were used to analyse changes from baseline. RESULTS: A total of 114 participants completed the study. 84.2% (80 out of 95) of participants or parents strongly agreed or agreed that the cream improved skin moisturisation at 4 weeks of treatment at the target area (p<0.0001). 86.3% of participants agreed that skin softness improved after 4 weeks (p <0.0001). ODS score improved from 2.1 (standard deviation (SD) 1.0) to 0.7 (SD 0.8) at 4 weeks. Skin hydration at the target area improved from 31.5 (SD 9.3) to 40.5 (SD 8.3) (p<0.001) at 4 weeks. Mean skin itchiness reduced from 38.0 (SD 25.4) to 17.7 (SD 19.8) at 4 weeks (p<0.0001). Ten (8.3%) adverse device events (ADEs) were reported. CONCLUSION: The emollient cream was well tolerated and demonstrated significant improvements in patient-reported skin moisturisation and softness as well as in clinical measurement of xerosis and skin hydration across all age groups including infants. The emollient cream can be recommended for dry skin conditions including atopic dermatitis and psoriasis.

Reading sentences of words with rotated letters: An eye movement study.

Participants' eye movements were measured as they read sentences in which individual letters within words were rotated. Both the consistency of direction and the magnitude of rotation were manipulated (letters rotated all in the same direction, or alternately clockwise and anti-clockwise, by 30° or 60°). Each sentence included a target word that was manipulated for frequency of occurrence. Our objectives were threefold: To quantify how change in the visual presentation of individual letters disrupted word identification, and whether disruption was consistent with systematic change in visual presentation; to determine whether inconsistent letter transformation caused more disruption than consistent letter transformation; and to determine whether such effects were comparable for words that were high and low frequency to explore the extent to which they were visually or linguistically mediated. We found that disruption to reading was greater as the magnitude of letter rotation increased, although even small rotations affected processing. The data also showed that alternating letter rotations were significantly more disruptive than consistent rotations; this result is consistent with models of lexical identification in which encoding occurs over units of more than one adjacent letter. These rotation manipulations also showed significant interactions with word frequency on the target word: Gaze durations and total fixation duration times increased disproportionately for low-frequency words when they were presented at more extreme rotations. These data provide a first step towards quantifying the relative contribution of the spatial relationships between individual letters to word recognition and eye movement control in reading.

Binocular coordination in response to two-dimensional, three-dimensional and stereoscopic visual stimuli.

PURPOSE: We were particularly interested in whether binocular coordination when viewing stereoscopic images would be more comparable to when viewing a 2D representation, or when viewing a real stimulus array in depth. METHODS: Data are reported from an experiment examining binocular coordination in response to stereoscopically presented stimuli. Movements of both eyes were recorded as participants viewed LED stimuli in a real scene with depth, a 2D image of the scene, and a stereoscopic image of the scene. RESULTS: When viewing real LEDs, vergence during saccades re-aligned the eyes in depth where necessary, with smaller adjustments during the following fixation. In contrast, when viewing the stereoscopic representation, vergence during saccades did not re-align the eyes in depth. The only effect of target depth on vergence occurred during the following fixation. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that disparity in parafoveal objects, in isolation from other depth cues (and, minimally, conflicting with blur), was insufficient for the visual system to target saccades appropriately in depth.