N-Acetylcarnosine, a natural histidine-containing dipeptide, as a potent ophthalmic drug in treatment of human cataracts.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Carnosine in this randomized controlled trial publication.

A study was designed to document and quantify the changes in lens clarity over 6 and 24 months in 2 groups of 49 volunteers (76 eyes) with an average age of 65.3 +/- 7.0 enrolled at the time of diagnosis of senile cataracts of minimal to advanced opacification.

The computerized interactive digital analysis of obtained images displayed the light scattering/absorbing centers of the lens into 2-D and 3-D scales.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 2 volunteers were involved.

The age groups tagged for this paper are middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

Patients were evaluated upon entry, at 2-month (Trial 1) and 6-month (Trial 2)-intervals for best corrected visual acuity (b/c VA), by ophthalmoscopy and the original techniques of glare test (for Trial 1), stereocinematographic slit-image and retro-illumination photography with subsequent scanning of the lens.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized and placebo-controlled study.

Because people in this Carnosine study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Carnosine group a baseline to be compared against.

What Was Measured

The intra-reader reproducibility of measuring techniques for cataractous changes was good, with the overall average of correlation coefficients for the image analytical data 0.830 and the glare test readings 0.998.

PubMed files the paper under topics including Age Factors, Carnosine, Cataract, Eye, Lens, Crystalline, Observer Variation and Oxidative Stress.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Carnosine in 2 volunteers.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

The publication is from 2001 (Peptides), a journal based in United States.

More context: the related Carnosine library page, all human trials.