Mary Cruse is the science communicator at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron science facility at Harwell Science and Innovation Campus. The facility is used by more than 3,000 academic and industrial researchers across a wide range of disciplines including structural biology, energy, engineering, nanoscience and environmental sciences

OUR eyes are our windows on to the world. They help us to navigate our environment, interact with others and move through our daily lives.

But for the 285 million people around the world suffering from impaired vision, things aren’t always quite so simple.

For those with sight issues, the eyes can be a source of deep discomfort, pain and frustration. Sight loss can take many forms, and symptoms can range from mild blurring or blank spots to total blindness.

Scientists and science facilities in Oxfordshire are helping to make inroads into the treatment of sight loss, and their work could eventually lead to new treatments and perhaps even ways of preventing some of the issues that lead to problems in the first place.

There are many different types of sight loss, and glaucoma is one of the most common. It’s usually caused by a build-up of pressure inside the eye that can eventually damage the optic nerve and other nerve tissue at the back of the eye.

Although glaucoma can be treated, the damage it causes is generally irreversible. It’s really important for scientists to work out exactly why and how it occurs in the first place, so that we can uncover new ways of treating and potentially reversing some of the damage it causes.

The impact of eye pressure starts at the very small level. Sub-microscopic tissue and fibres in the eye become slowly deformed, and it’s these tiny shifts that can eventually have life-changing consequences.

With the advanced scientific tools available on sites like the Harwell campus in Oxfordshire, scientists are able to scrutinise the minute alterations that take place when the eye is put under strain.

Scientists are looking into a range of possibilities for treating glaucoma: from enhancing the structure of the eye using stem cells, to deploying drugs that cause the optic nerve to regenerate.

The research scientists are doing in our county is adding to the body of knowledge on glaucoma and contributing to these concerted efforts to find a cure.

But glaucoma isn’t the only cause of blindness. Scientists in Oxfordshire are also studying the impact of toxic metals as a cause of age and disease-related blindness.

All of us have trace amounts of metals like iron, zinc and copper inside our eyes. These small amounts of metal are essential for our eyes to function.

However, sometimes the eye can stop properly regulating the amounts of metal. This creates toxic levels of metals, which can sometimes lead to blindness.

Using advanced techniques, scientists have been able to study changes to the concentration of these metals. Elements release energy in different ways when exposed to X-rays – these differences can be used like a fingerprint to identify the various elements inside a microscopic sample.

Using this technique, Oxfordshire facilities have helped to work out how toxic metals behave in the eye when it becomes weakened by age or disease. This powerful information could help to generate new treatments that prevent this type of vision failure in older people and those suffering from disease.

Our eyes are extraordinary machines. Everything we experience visually is the result of hugely complex physical processes taking place at the sub-microscopic level. When these processes break down, they can be difficult to repair and regenerate.

But every day we learn more about the intricate mechanisms behind the windows to our souls. The work that scientists are doing in Oxfordshire and around the world is driving improvements in treatments for sight loss.

Thanks to advanced technology, scientists can now see the world more fully than ever before. In time, their research may help sight-impaired people around the world to do the same.