Cataracts have been one of the most common reasons why a lot of people over the age of 40 have lost their vision or are suffering from vision problems. To date, the only way to treat cataracts is to undergo an operation which does not guarantee a 100% success.
There’s good news, though: scientists have developed eye drops which could dissolve cataracts without the need of surgery!
Finding the Key: Lanosterol
The eyes naturally make lanosterol but as people grow older, it is a possibility that the amount of lanosterol produced just could not cope with the clumping of the proteins. When this happens, cataracts develop.
Ophthalmologist Kang Zhang was studying the DNA results of two young patients when he discovered they were carrying a mutation which stopped them from making lanosterol, a type of enzyme that helps dissolve the build-up of proteins in the eye (the primary reason for cataracts).
The young patients were successfully treated using eye drops with lanosterol.
Of course, further research and tests need to be done before the use of this eye drops on humans could be approved yet these recent developments are exciting nonetheless. Dr. Zhang believes these eye drops could be available within just 2 years. If the treatment is approved, he thinks the lanosterol eye drops will surely be a staple in every household’s medicine cabinet.
If these lanosterol eye drops will be released for public use, surgery for cataracts will surely be a thing of the past.
But wait! There’s more good news!
Treatment for Alzheimer’s?
Researchers now believe that lanosterol just might be the key in treating other medical conditions involving clumping of proteins, such as Alzheimer’s disease. This still has to undergo extensive research studies but the future is promising.
