The new study showed that the drug-dispensing lenses were able to effectively lower the eye pressure in monkeys with glaucoma at least as much as the standard eye drops used to treat the disease.
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The low-dose contact lens, which contains lower doses of latanoprost than the eye drops, reduced pressure in the monkeys’ eyes at about the same rate as the drops, and lenses with higher doses of the drug had higher pressure reduction than both the low-dose lens and the drops.
Unlike previous similar contact lenses that dispensed latanoprost too quickly, the new device dispenses the drug in a more controlled manner, researchers said.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School report in a new study, glaucoma patients may soon be able to treat the condition using a lens that slowly releases medication to the eye.
Ciolino eyeballs the specialized lens.
However, they are unpopular with patients, who find them hard to self-administer and complain the medicine burns and stings. The film slows distribution of the drug, and its placement on the periphery allows clearance of the lens’s center to avoid impacting vision or moisture levels in the eye.
The goal here is to boost prevention and management of eye diseases by simplifying the treatment process.
Eye drops can’t fix the damage but they can stop it from getting worse. Patients who have trouble with eye drops may not use their medication as directed by their doctor, the researchers pointed out. Currently, the medications are delivered as eye drops, which sometimes cause stinging and burning, can be hard to self-administer and are subsequently associated with poor patient compliance, with some studies suggesting that compliance is as low as 50 percent.
Glaucoma is a serious eye disease and the leading cause of irreversible blindness. It is estimated that more than 500,000 people in England and Wales have glaucoma.
“We found that a lower-dose contact lens delivered the same amount of pressure reduction as the latanoprost drops, and a higher-dose lens, interestingly enough, had better pressure reduction than the drops in our small study”, Ciolino said. The lenses fitted with a higher dose of the drug had better pressure reduction, the team reported in Ophthalmology. Kohane is director of the Laboratory for Biomaterials and Drug Delivery at Boston Children’s Hospital. That could eventually be put to use in contacts that have thermal vision. The researchers had previously shown in a 2014 study that the lens is capable of delivering medication continuously for one month.
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The U.S. National Eye Institute has more about glaucoma.
