Medical application of carnosine.
A. M. Wang, C. Ma, Z. H. Xie, and F. Shen
Department of Biochemistry and Department of Neurobiology, Harbin Medical University, Harbin 150086, PR China
From our investigations, we have reported that eye drops containing 20 mM carnosine were used to treat 96 patients aged 60 years old having senile cataract of various degrees of maturity, with the duration of the disease from 2 to 21 years. The method is that after stopping the use of all other anti-cataract drugs, patients instilled 1-2 drops of the carnosine-containing solution in each eye 3-4 times each day for a period of treatment ranging from 3 to 6 months. The level of eyesight improvement and the change of lens transparency were considered as an evaluation index of the curative effect of carnosine. The result shows that carnosine gives a pronounced effect on primary senile cataract, the effective rate being 100%. For mature senile cataract, the effect rate is 80%, and positive effects were observed with other types of cataract. It is significant that no side effect has been found in the observed cases. During recent years, we have also applied carnosine drops containing the same content to nearly one thousand patients with senile cataract. Our research findings (ready to be published) show similar result.
In addition, we applied carnosine drops to patients aged 48-60 years with various degrees of eyesight impairment but without symptoms of cataract. The course of treatment is from 2 to 6 months. The results demonstrate that carnosine appears to alleviate eye tiredness and comparatively improve eyesight (obviously improve eyesight, giving more clear vision). Subjects reported that carnosine could brighten and relax their eyes. It is an important point that all the above research on medical application of carnosine has statistical significance.