SUPEROXIDE DISMUTASE ACTIVITY IN CLEAR AND CATARACTOUS HUMAN LENSES

Superoxide disinutase (SOD) is one of the im-portant enzymes that protects the ocular lens from oxidative damage.In this study, SOD activities in twenty immature. and twelve mature cataractous lenses and .five clear lenses were compared. The mean SOD activity in the clear lens group was me-asured to be 0.487 :I: 0.153 U/mg protein whilst it was 0,408 ±0.114 Ulmg, and 0.229 ± 0.103 Ulmg protein in the mature and imature cataractous gro-ups, respectively. These results indicated sig-nificantly lowered SOD activities in mature ca-taractous lenses as compared to those of the clear ones (p<0.05). Although our results revealed a gra-dual decrease in activity with maturation of ca-taract, the difference observed between immature and mature cataractous lenses was not statistically significant (p> 0.05). MeaningfUlly decreased SOD activities were found in the nuclei of all lens groups when compared to those of the cortex (p<0.05). Re-sults of the present study support the hypothesis that oxidative stress might play a role in senile ca-taractogenesis.