Which condition is commonly associated with loss of accommodation in advancing age?

The condition commonly associated with loss of accommodation in advancing age is presbyopia. As individuals age, the lens of the eye becomes less flexible, which significantly impairs the ability to focus on close objects. This loss of accommodation is a natural part of the aging process and typically begins to manifest in a person's early to mid-40s.

Presbyopia occurs due to the hardening of the lens and changes in the ciliary muscles involved in focusing. It results in difficulty reading small print or performing tasks that require clear vision at close distances, leading many to require reading glasses.

In contrast, conditions such as astigmatism, cataracts, and glaucoma do not primarily affect accommodation and have different mechanisms and implications. Astigmatism is a refractive error due to an irregular shape of the cornea, cataracts refer to the clouding of the lens that can affect overall vision but not necessarily accommodation itself, and glaucoma is a group of eye diseases that can damage the optic nerve, often associated with intraocular pressure, but it does not directly cause a loss of accommodation.