Introduction
Emily Y. Chew (Figure 1), M.D. is the deputy director of
the Division of Epidemiology and Clinical Applications and
the deputy clinical director at the National Eye Institute
(NEI), National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Chew has
a strong clinical and research interest in diabetic eye disease
and age-related eye diseases. She has thoroughly worked
on analyzing the data from the Early Treatment Diabetic
Retinopathy Study (ETDRS) and she continues to manage
and analyze data from the Age-Related Eye Disease Study
(AREDS). In addition, she is working on a large clinical
trial called the Actions to Control Cardiovascular Risk in
Diabetes (ACCORD).
Figure 1 Dr. Emily Y. Chew, M.D.
Interview
During the Zhongshan Medical Retina and Epidemiology
Symposium, I was honored to meet Dr. Chew and invite
her for a brief interview to share his expertise on AREDS.
At the beginning of the interview, Dr. Chew briefly
introduced her present a tion on AREDS 2 in the
symposium, mainly talking about the primary outcome
of testing the effect of lutein/zeaxanthin and omega-3 for
macular degeneration treatment. She also shared with
us that lutein and zeaxanthin, rather than omega-3 are
important for the treatment.
Dr. Chew claimed that one of the biggest challenges
in the study was that they had to make sure that all the
elderly patients come back and to raise money to support
their study. In the interview, Dr. Chew also mentioned a
large clinical trial she involved called the ACCORD; she
emphasized the importance of tight blood sugar control
for the decrease of diabetic retinopathy. When asked about
the greatest accomplishment in her career, Dr. Chew
replied that she hoped that she still had more things to do,
like training young ophthalmologists and helping them to
succeed.
Figure 2 Emily Y. Chew: current progress of Age-Related Eye
Disease Study 2 (1).
Available online: http://www.asvide.com/articles/1154
