Nuclear sclerosis is a condition that involves cloudiness of an eye's lens and affects many pets and some humans. This condition mostly affects cats, horses and dogs. Typically, the condition is mostly caused by aging eye lenses. The central part/area of the eye known as the nuclear gets dense and therefore tends to look like a grey haze inside an eye. The condition is also referred to as the old eye or the lenticular sclerosis.
How will it form?
New lens fibers continuously forms in the periphery part of your lens throughout your life time. However, as this lens age increases, all the new fibers push the outermost portions of all the old fibers inward. This at the end causes the inner portion of lens to be denser and cloudy. Unlike cataract, this condition never affects the normal arrangement of the lens fibers and therefore it has no effects on the visions. In a person, cloudiness in the lens results in presbyopia . Presbyopia is a serious condition that means that the lens losses its ability to accommodate completely.
Lens accommodation refers to how the eye usually focuses on those objects that are more close to it. Eye accommodation is very important to allow easier TV watching or clear reading from a screen. Most experts have stated that this condition is the major cause of why most people will require reading glasses at the age of 45.
What are the symptoms?
- The most common feature of this condition is that the affected eye starts to be cloudy. This happens when the person gets older.
- Generally, the condition is not observable before a person gets to his/her forties and in dogs before they reach 7 years old.
- Myopia reflective shifts. Although patients considers it as improvement of their near vision.
- Decrease of the distance vision.
- Having difficulty with night driving
- Loss of color discrimination ability
Treatment of the condition
The condition is caused by normal aging process. In animals, veterinarians will diagnose the condition with the use of a simple eye checkup. Pupil dilation helps them to understand whether the animal is suffering from the condition or not.
To diagnose the condition a veterinarian has to shine a penlight over the dog’s eye. Those dogs that suffer from this condition will not reflect any light back. However, a dog suffering from old eye problems will produce some reflection.
This eye condition never causes pain to the affected person or animal and therefore it will not require any other treatment. Humans with this condition are provided with proper reading using glasses, which solves the problem. You should supervise those animals suffering from the condition when outdoors and ensure that a veterinarian checks them regularly. This condition may lead to permanent eye loss in pets.