Keratoconus is a fairly widespread disease in teenagers and young adults in their twenties and thirties, and it is caused by the thinning of the cornea, presumably because of increased enzyme activity in the eye. However, doctors still fail to see eye to eye on the real causes of this condition. Being a gradually degenerating affliction, cures and therapies were sought for many years.
 

Finally, scientists at the Columbia University in New York developed a chemical substance that, once applied to the eye, stiffens the cornea and prevents it from developing the cone shape that is characteristic to keratoconus. To achieve that, David Paik and his team, working from the Department of Ophthalmology, used a sodium nitrite solution, which binds to specific receptors on the surface of the cornea and makes the latter lose its elasticity.
 

The collagen-rich layer that covers the eye has been a natural barrier of sorts for other treatments aimed at improving this medical condition. German scientists devised a way of stopping the disease a few years back, but their method involved scraping off these collagen cells and then stiffening the cornea with strong UV light. This therapy was never approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), because neither of the two steps involved in the process benefited the eye.
 

The American team managed to design their solution in such a way that it simply soaks through the outermost cell layer and, if applied daily, studies show that the eye stiffens and keratoconus stops its development. Paik says that other severe eye diseases, such as short-sightedness or severe myopia, could also be treated with this technique.
 

If this therapy is approved, the team is confident that doctors will benefit from a new means of treating eye diseases that, in the past, were beyond their control. Degenerating conditions could be stopped dead in their tracks. Though the substance is not meant to heal, but to stop eye diseases from evolving, patients could benefit from a much higher quality of life after starting this treatment.