Thanks to Anglia Ruskin University expert and Professor Barbara Pierscionek, there’s new hope that cataracts, the condition affecting tens of millions of people worldwide for donkey’s years, can be cured through drug treatment.
According to SciTechDaily, the treatment in question has already achieved encouraging lab results during the tests. Professor Barbara Pierscionek was the leader of an international team of scientists who had been carrying out tests on the potential drug for cataracts.
VP1-001 could be the key to cure cataracts
VP1-001 is the name of the oxysterol compound that might become the drug for curing cataracts that the world has been waiting for. It has been showing improvements during the tests for the refractive index profiles in 61% of lenses, restoring the protein organization.
Professor Pierscionek explained:
This study has shown the positive effects of a compound that had been proposed as an anti-cataract drug but never before tested on the optics of the lens. It is the first research of this kind in the world.
He also added, as the same source quotes:
Improvements occurred in some types of cataracts but not in all indicating that this may be a treatment for specific cataracts. This suggests distinctions may need to be made between cataract types when developing anti-cataract medications. It is a significant step forward towards treating this extremely common condition with drugs rather than surgery.
Over 24 million Americans aged at least 40 years old suffer from cataracts, and only surgery has been used so far to cure it. The procedure implies replacing the cloudy lens from the eyes with artificial ones. The recovery takes between 2 and 6 weeks, but it’s pretty much worth it since the surgery itself has a high success rate. Sadly enough, most cataracts occur naturally in people as they get older. What happens is that around the age of 40 years old, the proteins located in the lens of the eye begin to clump together, forming a cloudy area on the lens that will obviously hinder vision.
The new study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science.
