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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.
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