Aging and senile cataracts: an integrated theory. Dedicated to professor Dr. F Hollwich on his 65th birthday.

Earlier theories of cataract formation have been unsatisfactory and incomplete because they usually assigned a single causative factor to the lenticular changes of cataract. The older theories tended to restrict themselves to consideration of the lens itself, and so were necessarily limited in their premises. The recent rise of interdisciplinary study in medicine has demonstrated the need for a more fundamental and yet broader search for explanations to the disease process. Aging itself is a case in point, and it gives ophthalmologists the framework for an integrated and comprehensive theory of cataract formation, presented here. This new theory considers the alterations in the lens in terms of molecular-level actions that are known to be a part of the aging process-mutation, cross-linkage, and free radical reaction. The further study of these factors, already better understood in other disciplines such as biochemistry and genetics, may lead ophthalmologists to a more precise theory of cataract formation.