LABORATORY SCIENCES Clinical Detection of Precataractous Lens Protein Changes Using Dynamic Light Scattering

Objective: To use dynamic light scattering to clini-cally assess early precataractous lens protein changes. Methods: We performed a cross-sectional study in 380 eyes of 235 patients aged 7 to 86 years with Age-Related Eye Disease Study clinical nuclear lens opacity grades 0 to 3.8. A dynamic light-scattering device was used to as-sess -crystallin, a molecular chaperone protein shown to bind other damaged lens proteins, preventing their ag-gregation. The outcomemeasure was the -crystallin in-dex, a measure of unbound -crystallin in each lens. The association of the -crystallin index with increasing nuclear opacity and aging was determined. Results:Therewasasignificantdecrease in the-crystallin indexassociatedwith increasingnuclear lensopacitygrades (P.001).Thereweresignificant lossesof-crystallineve