Sodium and potassium content of cataractous human lenses.

The sodium and potassium content of human senile cataractous lenses was investigated by flame photometry. A parallelism was found between the severity of the senile cataractous disorder and the increase of sodium and decrease of potassium content of lenses. The changes in ion concentration were not entirely continuous; gaps were found for both cations in a certain concentration range. The involvement of lens proteins in maintaining the gradients for sodium and potassium is also discussed.