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Original Research Communication |
1 From the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (AT, PFJ, and GR) and the Gerald J and Dorothy R Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy (AT and PFJ), Tufts University, Boston; The Channing Laboratory, the Department of Medicine (SEH and WCW), Harvard Medical School (LTC), Boston; the Departments of Nutrition (WCW) and Epidemiology (SEH and WCW), Harvard School of Public Health, Boston; and the Center for Ophthalmic Research (PMK, JF, WT, JKW, NP, and LTC), Brigham and Women's Hospital (SEH and WCW), Boston.
Background: Proper nutrition appears to protect against cataracts. Few studies have related nutrition to the odds of developing cortical or posterior subcapsular (PSC) cataracts.
Objective: We assessed the relation between usual nutrient intakes and age-related cortical and PSC lens opacities.
Design: We studied 492 nondiabetic women aged 53–73 y from the Nurses' Health Study cohort who were without previously diagnosed cataracts. Usual nutrient intake was calculated as the average intake from 5 food-frequency questionnaires collected over a 13–15-y period before the eye examination. Duration of vitamin supplement use was determined from 7 questionnaires collected during this same period. We defined cortical opacities as grade 
0.5 and subcapsular opacities as grade 0.3 of the Lens Opacities Classification System III.
Results: Some lenses had more than one opacity. No nutrient measure was related to prevalence of opacities in the full sample, but significant interactions were seen between age and vitamin C intake (P = 0.02) for odds of cortical opacities and between smoking status and folate (P = 0.02), 
-carotene (P = 0.02), ß-carotene (P = 0.005), and total carotenoids (P = 0.02) for odds of PSC opacities. For women aged <60 y, a vitamin C intake 362 mg/d was associated with a 57% lower odds ratio (0.43; 95% CI: 0.2, 0.93) of developing a cortical cataract than was an intake <140 mg/d, and use of vitamin C supplements for 10 y was associated with a 60% lower odds ratio (0.40; 0.18, 0.87) than was no vitamin C supplement use. Prevalence of PSC opacities was related to total carotenoid intake in women who never smoked (P = 0.02).
Conclusions: Our results support a role for vitamin C in diminishing the risk of cortical cataracts in women aged <60 y and for carotenoids in diminishing the risk of PSC cataracts in women who have never smoked.
Key Words: Cortical lens opacity • posterior subcapsular lens opacity • Nurses' Health Study • Nutrition and Vision Project • vitamins • carotenoids • women
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