The era of antiaging ophthalmology comes of age: antiaging approach for dry eye treatment.

Recent advances in the understanding of aging have paved a new way of thinking about intervening with the aging process. There is a global agreement in the scientific community that calorie restriction (CR) can actually extend the life span of various kinds of animals so that this has become a real intervention in aging. In addition to the CR theory, the free radical theory is another important hypothesis, which is believed to be involved in aging. According to this theory, we can manage the aging process by controlling calories or reactive oxygen species. In this paper, these two important aging theories, CR and free radical aging, are reviewed, and it is discussed how to apply these theories to the prevention and treatment of eye diseases. Finally, we share the preliminary results of our animal study on dry eye, and I report my personal experience as a dry eye patient, which has been alleviated by the antiaging approach. Copyright 2010 S. Karger AG, Basel.