Letters to the editor
Cataract eyedrops
Sir,
Scientists are trying to cure the most common cause of blindness cataracts with eye drops.
Cataract is responsible for about 51pc blindness cases worldwide, making it the most common cause of blindness according to data from the World Health Organisation.
The situation in this country is not promising either, with millions of patients undergoing cataract surgery each year. Education and understanding of eye care in Bangladesh and other developing countries are lagging far behind.
Most of the time, people who have cataract protein clumps in the lens of the eye that blur vision develop them with age, but inherited genetic mutations can also cause cataracts to form. Currently, the only way to treat cataracts is to remove the cloudy lens and replace it with a clear artificial lens via surgery. Scientists recently came up with an alternative, less invasive treatment thats still experimental: eye drops.
It may yet be a while before the eye drops are even tested in humans, but the specially formulated drops appear to reduce the severity of cataracts in dogs and in rabbits.
When scientists tested lanosterol eye drops on dogs with cataracts that had developed with age, they saw the eye drops made the dogs lenses significantly clearer, seemingly dissolving their cataracts over six weeks.
Arifa, Chittagong
