Did you know that the leading cause of blindness around the world is cataracts? Did you know that approximately 20 million are suffering from cataracts?
Although highly treatable, cataracts would require risky and expensive surgery - making it highly inaccessible to those living in developing countries.
IFLScience aptly explains how cataracts are formed:
"Cataracts, or cloudy lenses, arise when lens proteins called crystallins begin to twist into the wrong conformation and clump together. Crystallins, a major constituent of the lens' fiber cells, normally help keep the lens transparent by preventing proteins from forming aggregates that diffract incoming light. They do this by acting as molecular 'chaperones' that maintain the solubility of lens proteins.
"As we age, these crystallin proteins can become damaged and consequently cluster into fibers much like what we see in the brains of those with Alzheimer's. Unfortunately, these tangles of protein are much more stable than the normal, native form, and since you stop making crystallins when you're born, their formation depletes the eye of healthy, functional versions."
Thanks to a new study jointly worked on by the University of California, San Francisco, the University of Michigan, and Washington University in St. Louis (published in the journal Science), cataracts may soon be eradicated with a much simpler, and less invasive procedure: eye drops.
The study authors went on to find drug compounds that act as "pharmaceutical chaperones" - molecules that are able to cling to and "stabilize the natural state of a protein" in order to prevent crystallins from clumping together.
Currently called "chemical 21," these molecules grown in petri dishes were found to dissolve formed clumps, in addition to preventing bundles from actually forming.
Tests were done on mice that were "genetically predisposed to cataracts" and on elderly mice that had age-related cataracts.
Chemical 21 was applied as eye drops to both the mice and lenses that were surgically removed from humans, and it was found to successfully lessen the cloudiness of the lens.
Unfortunately, the tests are still unable to show evidence of vision improvement in the animals - although transparency increased.
Even though more testing and development is needed before the eye drops can be fully realized, the research is definitely groundbreaking not just for cataracts, but for patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, who also have clumpy crystallin.
