Cataract Cure: Eye Drops May Replace Surgery For Common Cause Of Blindness

An eye drop tested on dogs suggests that cataracts, the most common cause of blindness in humans, could one day be cured without surgery, a study said on Wednesday.

People with the mutations – such as members of the families with inherited cataracts – appear to be at higher risk of lens protein aggregation and developing cataracts.

Cataract surgery in most cases require the eye lens to be replaced with an intraocular lens implant since the cataract is often removed with the front portion of the lens capsule.

To examine what effects lanosterol might have on cataracts, scientists experimented on dogs with naturally occurring cataracts.

The chain of research leading to the potential cure began with two children – patients of lead researcher Kang Zhang of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou – from families beset with a congenital, or inherited, form of the condition. Normal versions of the molecule help prevent the proteins from clumping together.

That holds true with a new treatment that scientists speculate could either treat or prevent cataracts in the eyes.

After confirming that lanosterol helped ward off the proteins, they tested the drops in dogs. The substance succeeded in removing the proteins, and even succeeded when a similar test was run on rabbit lenses.

“These are very preliminary findings”, said J Fielding Hejtmancik, a scientist at the US National Eye Institute, who wrote a commentary also published in Nature.

Globally millions of people suffer from cataracts.

Dr. Kang Zhang, the lead author of the study and chief of ophthalmic genetics with the Shiley Eye Institute at the University of California, San Diego, said, “The results we have point to a new nonsurgical treatment of cataracts that can be used for people who might have moderate cataracts or do not have access to surgery”, according to Philly.

While surgery for cataracts are considered to be a routine procedure that has been proven safe, the demand for such an operation is expected to increase dramatically. Older patients are more likely to develop cataracts, but there have been also cases when patients have been diagnosed with this disease as a result of a trauma or a radiation incident. The need of a new treatment has become all the more obvious, given that approximately 51% of the world population is suffering from cataract-related blindness, that is, 20 million people.