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Study: steroid shows potential for treating cataracts without surgery

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness worldwide.
Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness worldwide.

Scientists have identified a chemical that could one day be used in eye drops to treat cataracts — potentially eliminating the need for expensive surgery, the only treatment option currently available.

In a healthy eye, light passes through a clear, transparent lens to the retina. Cataracts cause the lens to cloud over, impairing vision.
Credit National Institutes of Health
In a healthy eye, light passes through a clear, transparent lens to the retina. Cataracts cause the lens to cloud over, impairing vision.

The research team was led by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor but included researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle and Washington University in St. Louis. The group found that eye drops made with a type of steroid could partially reverse cataracts in mice.

Washington University ophthalmology researcher Usha Andley said most of the animals in the study responded to treatment. "This opens the door for developing ophthalmic drugs that can treat cataract(s) and remove the need for surgery," Andley said.

Cataracts are very common, particularly in older people. They form when proteins, called crytallins, in the lens of the eye start to aggregate, causing the normally transparent lens to cloud over. "Solubility of these proteins is known to decline with age," Andley said. By age 80, more than half of Americans develop cataracts.

Globally, cataracts affect more than 20 million people, most of whom do not have access to surgical treatment. "There's a huge unmet medical need," Andley said. "Untreated cataracts are the leading cause of blindness in the world."

Andley said having a way to treat cataracts without surgery could change that.

And, according to Andley and her co-authors, the same class of compounds may have potential for treating other conditions involving amyloids, or insoluble aggregations of proteins — like Alzheimer's disease.

The current study is published in the journal Science.

Follow Véronique LaCapra on Twitter@KWMUScience

Copyright 2015 St. Louis Public Radio

Science reporter Véronique LaCapra first caught the radio bug writing commentaries for NPR affiliate WAMU in Washington, D.C. After producing her first audio documentaries at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies in N.C., she was hooked! She has done ecological research in the Brazilian Pantanal; regulated pesticides for the Environmental Protection Agency in Arlington, Va.; been a freelance writer and volunteer in South Africa; and contributed radio features to the Voice of America in Washington, D.C. She earned a Ph.D. in ecosystem ecology from the University of California in Santa Barbara, and a B.A. in environmental policy and biology from Cornell. LaCapra grew up in Cambridge, Mass., and in her mother’s home town of Auxerre, France. LeCapra reported for St. Louis Public Radio from 2010 to 2016.