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Cruelly ignored, but NOT forgotten
The whole world believes the eye profession treats all eye diseases. But although they had the means, they never wanted to treat cataract and still do not want to. Despite the fact that effective eyedrops had been developed by biochemists around the world since 1980, eye doctors still only want to perform cataract surgery, and destroy the natural lens even though cataracts could have been treated.
Few people are aware that the eyedrops in the list below were ever developed. But don't take my word for it, please look them all up on the Internet. They each clear the lens by different mechanisms. Each of them was a bright ray of hope for humanity. Most of them could have put an end to cataract surgery for good, but one after another, all of them were cruelly ignored. Despite their success in the lab, in animal models or even human trials, none of them were ever offered to cataract patients by the eye profession, as they should have been. Consequently, the only option available today continues to be surgery.
I often wondered whether any of the ophthalmologists appearing in the glowing advertisements for cataract surgery on the Net have had cataract surgery themselves. At least, one rarely hears about it. Probably, they are more reluctant than we are, since they know that a plastic IOL is inferior to their natural eye lens, and they know the risks.
Of course, everybody who is facing cataract surgery would rather avoid it, and clear their vision by treating their cataracts with eyedrops which do not destroy the integrity of their eye. Since many such eyedrops already existed, this means that cataract surgery is an unnecessary operation.
Even if the surgery is successful, all remaining power of accommodation is lost, so if a monofocal IOL is implanted, several pairs of eyeglasses will be needed to cope with near and distance vision. Also, due to the loss of accommodation, multifocal eyeglasses can no longer be used, so there may be trouble going up or down stairways. All this could have been avoided by the eyedrops in the list, which preserve the power of accommodation. As if that weren't enough, surgery carries risks of inferior outcomes and secondary complications.
Yet in the world today, many people with cataracts (around 35 million) do not have access even to surgery. The prior existence of these non-surgical eyedrops therefore also means that 35 million people are needlessly blind. Here is the list:
1. Reduced glutathione - a S=S bond breaker (Japan, 1960)
2. Esters that restore optical clarity (Benedek at al., MIT, 1980)
3. Bifunctional molecules that restore optical clarity "in lieu" of the natural chaperone, alpha-crystallin (Muthukumar, University of Massachusetts, 2017)
4. N-acetylcarnosine (NAC) (Babizhayev, Russia, 1996)
5. Organic germanium (G-132, G-385, etc.) - an AGE solubilizer (Nakamura et al., Kitasato University, Japan, 2000)
6. Lutein - a "surrogate" carotenoid (previously available on the Internet, but no longer)
7. Aldose reductase inhibitors (Kinoshita, 2010, USA)
8. C-KAD - a glycation inhibitor plus chelating agent (Chakshu Pharmaceuticals, 2002, USA)
9. NACA (N-acetylcysteine amide) - a reduced glutathione precursor (Ercal, University of Missouri, 2016)
10. Lanosterol and 25-hydroxycholesterol - "chaperone" stabilizers (Kang Zhang, USA, 2015)
11. Rosmarinic acid - an AGE crosslink breaker (Glikman et al, University of Tel Aviv, Israel, 2018)
This list is not exhaustive.
There are some limitations. Firstly, reduced glutathione works only in about 50% of cases. Next, although NAC can still be bought on the Internet, it is not likely to improve cataract unless combined with a chelating agent such as EDTA, as it was in C-KAD. Finally, lanosterol or other sterols are not likely to work unless some unmodified alpha-crystallin remains in the lens, as there would be in early cataract. But the other agents on this list do not have any such limitations. They reversed advanced cataracts too, and are desperately needed today. Anybody who reads this post and can do something about this tragic situation, please reply.
I broadly recognize two types of cataract.
1. Cataract due to clumping of lens crystallins.
2. Cataract due to covalent bonding of lens crystallins with advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs), or xanthurenic acid and its derivatives.
The main AGEs in the human lens responsible for binding crystallin and causing cataract are: imidazolone, argpyrimidine, carboxymethyllysine and pentosidine. Most of these AGEs and the resulting AGE-crystallin complexes are colored yellow or brown pigments so the cataractous lens takes on a yellow or brown color. Some of these AGEs are fluorescent, so the cataractous lens fluoresces when exposed to light of certain wavelengths.
Now many of you will have heard by now that there will be trials of lanosterol eye drops to treat senile cataract. It seems to me however that lanosterol will only address the first type of cataract due to simple clumping of crystallin. For the second type, we would need an eye drop containing an "AGE breaker" which is able to release the crystallin from its shackles to the AGEs and xanthurenic acid.
Around the year 2000, research was carried out in Japan on aminoguanidine (AG) to explore its AGE-breaker potential in cataract. Improvement in lens clarity was obtained, but the effect was only temporary. Now, a new AGE-breaker, more powerful than aminoguanidine, and which works on crystallin, has been discovered in Japan - water caltrop extract. Please see the following link:
http://www.toukastress.jp/webj/article/2015/GS15-13.pdf
This extract is made from water caltrop, an aquatic water plant commonly known as Chinese water chestnut, which is used in Chinese cuisine. In Southeast Asia, water chestnuts are also sometimes eaten raw, which is risky as the plants can harbor flukes or parasites that can infect humans with lethal consequences if untreated. However, we do not expect any such problems with the extract of water caltrops.
And my point here is that we urgently need for a company to make sterile eye drops from water caltrop to clear the lens from age-related cataract of the second and most insidious type, which is due to binding of lens crystallins to AGEs. If you read the above link, it seems like this would work.
I would like to suggest a second step after using AGE-breaker eyedrops.
The previous Japanese experiments with aminoguanidine or organic germanium (germanium sesquioxide) were only able to achieve a temporary restoration of lens clarity. This is not surprising because the AGEs were not removed from the lens - they merely recombined with the lens proteins (crystallins) when the experiment was stopped, and the lens became opaque again.
The growth of a cataract is largely due to the failure of the pump at the back of the lens, the so-called Na+/K+-ATPase pump, whereby the lens acquires nourishment from the aqueous humor and discharges waste products back into it. Were we to free up the crystallins from the shackles of the AGEs with eyedrops, preferably containing nanoparticles of AGE-breakers like water chestnut extract, we would still have to remove the AGEs from the lens. I believe this could be done by reactivating the lens pump - in other words, by re-establishing circulation within the lens - by consuming Chinese or Japanese traditional herbal medicines such as "Hachimijiogan". I found a reference on the Net stating that "Hachimijiogan" ("Ba Wei Di Huang Wan" in TCM) does reactivate the lens pump. Alone, oral consumption of these herbals might not have much effect in cataract, but combined with the use of AGE-breaker eyedrops, there may well be significant cataract reversal and permanent restoration of lens clarity.
ALMOST TWO YEARS LATER, AND STILL NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE!!!
Rosmarinic Acid Restores Complete Transparency of Sonicated Human Cataract Ex Vivo and Delays Cataract Formation In Vivo Chemerovski-Glikman, M., Mimouni, M., Dagan, Y. et al.
This article appeared in the June, 2018 edition of the scientific journal, Nature.
Quote from this article:
Taken together, our results support the concept that aggregation inhibition may provide a pharmacological treatment strategy for cataract, and highlight rosmarinic acid as a promising potential for palliative treatment of cataract, the leading cause of blindness worldwide. Data obtained from carefully designed and conducted future clinical studies may provide a strong foundation for design of the proper treatment regimen, dosage and duration. We hope that in the near future this promising pharmacological treatment will provide a safe, inexpensive and easily-accessible therapy for cataract.
As my cataracts continue to worsen with no hope of treatment in sight, I called a professor in the university department where this work had been carried out. I asked him whether there had been any move towards an eyedrop based on this momentous discovery.
Q: What is the status of your application for an anticataract eyedrop based on rosmarinic acid?
A: Why don't you have surgery?
Q: Why do you ask me that question?
Silence of several seconds
A: You know, I'm not an eye doctor.
Q: Then why did you bother to do this research?
Silence of several seconds
A: I'm a scientist. It was for the sake of scientific knowledge. If you need treatment, ask your eye doctor.
Q: I told you, the eye profession won't help us.
A: You know, if people want to use our discovery, there's nothing to stop them.
Q: But cataract patients have no lab facilities to make sterile eye drops. What do you expect us to do?
A: Silence. No answer.
This concluded our conversation, which ended up going nowhere. Of course, I had not really expected anything else. He more or less admitted that this discovery, like all the anticataract agents before it, would be consigned to the annals of scientific knowledge without ever being used to help the 20 million+ human beings who are blind from cataract, and have to spend all their days fumbling around in eternal darkness. As I said before, mint contains rosmarinic acid, and mint is already a component of Ayurvedic (Indian) eye drops such as Isotine, where it is included at a concentration of 0.015%. The problem is, those eye drops also contain metal salts which would make the cataracts even worse. We need an eye drop with the mint, but without the metals.
As my cataracts continue to worsen, I felt the desire to once again call the local ophthalmology association and make my dissatisfaction known. I wanted to once more let them know that in the past, there were alternatives to cataract surgery which had successful clinical trials or were used successfully on large numbers of patients, such as certain eyedrops.
I regret that I cannot discuss these methods in this forum at this time for fear that the eye profession will attempt to block them. The fact that they are willing to block them, and to ensure that cataract surgery outlasts the human race, is clear from the details of our telephone conversation which went like this. My questions and comments are labeled "A", and their response is "B":
A: "According to statistics, most persons who undergo cataract surgery die within 5 years after the operation. Since there were successful alternatives to surgery in the past, why do you force people to have the operation today?"
B: "Most people with cataracts are elderly, and don't have long to live anyway. So if they do die soon after a cataract operation, it doesn't matter".
A: "I see.
Of course eyedrops for example take several months to work, whereas cataract surgery is very fast and therefore very profitable. But since there are alternatives which would enable me to keep my own eye lens, and avoid an incision as well as secondary complications, I strongly object to letting your surgeons cut on me just for the sake of your big profits".
B: "Do you really find that so objectionable?"
A: "Damn right I do".
I was so taken aback by this frank admission, that I decided there was no point in continuing the discussion. But, I felt that CureZone readers should know the other side's responses, so I have posted them here.
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