What are the causes of Cataracts? - Dr. Ajanta Chakravarty

Most common cause of cataract is age, just like a person aged and you know you get greying of hair hardening of blood vessels etc, a cataract can develop in the eye, it's a very common thing in age group more than 65 years, in India it starts a little bit earlier but in western countries about the age of 70 most people have some amount of cataract and it is the leading cause of preventable blindness in the world. Now the second thing that can be causing cataracts could be congenital a child can be born with cataract, it can be very little cataract which does not affect the vision, it can be gradually developing so that the child sought of become blind as they grow. The causes of this on usually due to maternal infections during pregnancy, the most common and braided cost is rubella it should also called German measles, if a mother day rubella in the first trimester there is the chance that the child might get cataract along with other symptoms with rubella syndrome like heart, hearing and various other system of the body can be involved. Then the other course could be medical secondary to medical causes diabetes, hypertension, low syndrome then hypoparathyroidism can also cause cataracts. The secondary causes due to medical conditions most commonly seen in Diabetics. Diabetics get early cataract and they can also get a specific type of diabetic cataract. Other causes medically seen in condition of hypertension, maybe sometimes is obesity, high cholesterol level and also in high myopes. Drug induced cataracts the most common drug that can cause a cataract is steroids, corticosteroid treatment for a long time can lead to development of cataract, other drugs that may be causing cataracts could be benzodiazepines. Steroids play really a very strong role in development of cataracts, trauma is another call there any injury to the eye, a blunt or a penetrating injury can lead to cataract formation and indirect injury in the form of an any intraocular surgery can develop into a cataract in the later days. There could be other causes like nutritional deficiency, anaemia or Vitamin A,B,C any of these nutritional causes can lead to cataract. Lifestyle changes like heavy smoking is also known to develop cataracts, exposure to do much of ultraviolet radiation are also known to cause cataract that's why they say people living in India, Australia where there is a lot of Sunlight can develop to attract much faster than people were not exposed to too much of ultraviolet radiation.