Women who took vitamin C supplements for at least 10 years proved only 23 percent as likely to develop cataracts as women who received the vitamin only in their diet, a new study finds.
See the following news report: http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc ... 7/fob2.htm
Allen Taylor of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston has been probing the relationship between cataracts and antioxidant vitamins, such as vitamin C, for more than a decade. Initially working with eye tissue in the laboratory, he and his colleagues have shown that vitamin C can slow the chemical reactions that make certain lens proteins clump together, causing cataracts. The group then demonstrated that giving animals the vitamin retarded cataract development.
It is interesting to contrast this result with the warnings of a few doctors who believe that the statin cholesterol-lowering drugs, when taken in combination with a common antibiotic, can triple the cataract risk.
See: http://www.kcom.edu/spotlight/cholesterol_cataracts.htm
Yet both vitamin C and the statin drugs lower cholesterol by inhibiting the same liver enzyme HMG-CoA Reductase:
See: http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/abstract/261/16/7127