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Lycopene may help prevent cataracts, animal study suggests
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Lycopene, a nutritional antioxidant, helped protect against experimentally induced cataract formation in animal studies.
The studies were performed by Suresh Kumar Gupta and colleagues at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. In one study, cataracts were induced in 9-day-old rats using subcutaneous sodium selenite injections. A test group was injected with lycopene 4 hours before the selenite.
In another study, cataracts were induced by adding 30% galactose to the diets of rats, with a test group also receiving lycopene daily.
Only 9% of eyes receiving lycopene in the first study developed dense nuclear opacities compared to 83% in the control group. Oral administration of lycopene in the second study also significantly delayed the onset and progression of galactose cataract, with 35% of the lycopene eyes developing mature cataract as opposed to all eyes in the control group.
The study is published in the August issue of the journal Nutrition.