Bulletin No. 2, 2016

News in Brief 43 World’s Largest Study on Prevalence and Progression of Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease in Diabetic Patients Under the leadership of Prof. Chan Lik-yuen (right), Director of the Institute of Digestive Disease, Prof. Wong Wai-sun (centre) and Prof. Kong Pik-shan (left) from the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, a research team screened 1,918 diabetic patients with the FibroScan machine to measure their liver fat and fibrosis in 2013 and 2014. Those with drinking habits, viral hepatitis B and C were excluded from the study. Among the screened patients, 73% were found to have fatty liver and nearly one out of five has severe liver fibrosis or cirrhosis. The research team recommends non-alcoholic fatty liver disease screening to all diabetic patients to identify the disease at an early stage and to prevent disease progression and liver complication. Survey Reveals Association of Methamphetamine Abuse with Increased Risk of Developing Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms The Department of Surgery conducted the world’s first large- scale questionnaire survey on adolescents to investigate the prevalence of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) and the effect of psychotropic substance abuse. The study, conducted between 2012 and 2014, investigated 11,938 secondary students from 45 schools. Participants who were non- substance abusers were regarded as control subjects and among them 18.5% had experienced at least one LUTS, such as urinary frequency, incontinence and voiding difficulties. For the 321 participants who abused methamphetamine, the figure increased to 47.8%. As for those who abused both ketamine and methamphetamine, their risks of developing LUTS are nine-times that of non-substance abusers World’s First System of Seamless Visual Sharing with Colour Blind People Prof. Wong Tien-tsin (2nd right), Department of Computer Science and Engineering, designed the world’s first system of ‘Seamless Visual Sharing with Colour Blind People’ with binocular vision technology. Through the standard stereoscopic display installed with this system, colour vision deficiency (CVD) users wearing stereoscopic glasses can share the same visual content simultaneously with normal vision audiences, without any impact on the latter. The system’s computer-controlled binocular display systems could tailor the colour discrimination solution to each CVD individual, which propose a novel calibration method to measure the differences in severity between CVD affected individuals. Dr. Tam Yuk-him (left) and Prof. Ng Chi-fai of the Department of Surgery