Eye drops containing lanosterol, a substance found in healthy eyes, have been shown to reduce cataracts in sick dogs.
Cataracts are slowly growing clouding of the lens, causing progressive loss of vision. Discomfort in daily or professional activities leads to considering surgical treatment to restore transparency to the eye and correct sight.
This operation, known to be safe and effective, makes it the most common surgical procedure in the world. In France, nearly 600,000 people, most of them elderly, are operated on each year.
But to avoid the inconvenience of a surgical operation, researchers are working on other alternatives. In a study published in the journal Nature, a team of Chinese scientists led by Ling Zhao, from the University of Sichuan (Chengdu), explains having demonstrated that treatment with eye drops, “could reduce the severity of cataracts (…) in vivo in dogs” .
Results to be confirmed on humans
To achieve this result, dogs that naturally suffered from cataracts were given drops containing lanosterol. It is a small molecule found in the healthy eye identified by the Chinese team as a key element in preventing or preventing the mechanism of cataract formation.
As a result, after six weeks of treatment, the opacity of the lens of diseased dogs decreased, reducing the severity of the disease. Comparable results were obtained in vitro on diseased rabbit lenses. In fact, once in the eye, the substance is quite simply successful in opposing the slow process of lens denaturation and aggregation in the eye caused by cataracts.
This research could lead to “the first preventive treatment for cataracts in humans,” said independent American expert J. Fielding Hejtmancik, in a separate commentary published by Nature. It therefore remains to test this new treatment eye drops in humans and to prove its effectiveness again.
One in five people affected from the age of 65
In the end, the fact of slowing down and delaying the onset of cataracts in the elderly by several years made it possible to greatly reduce the need for operations, underlines this ophthalmologist. A useful work when we know that the aging of the world population will result in a doubling of cataract operations within 20 years. Today, this pathology affects one in five people from the age of 65, one in three in those over 75 and almost two in three after 85 years, according to theInserm.
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