Cataract is the leading cause of blindness in the world. Cataract surgery is the most commonly performed operation in the UK's National Health Service, with around 330,000 cataract operations performed per year in England. Although many risk factors for cataract are already known, the risk associated with many of these have not been quantified in the British population. Analyses of the UKBiobank cohort will allow novel risk factors to be identified, as well as examining diseases associated with cataract, and so possible common causal pathways and potential new preventive strategies.
The environmental, lifestyle, biometric and genetic characteristics of those who have had cataract surgery will be compared to those who have not yet had cataract surgery. The comparisons will take into account how these characteristics affect cataract risk individually and in combination with other characteristics. This data will then be used to infer risk factors for cataract and also factors that may be preventative, thus suggesting potentially novel treatment areas. Associations with other diseases may imply common disease pathways facilitating further research direction. We will use the full dataset of approximately 500,000 people.