Researchers in the Department of Ophthalmology at Boston Children’s Hospital have developed a contact lens that will deliver controlled amounts of the drug directly into patients’ eyes with glaucoma. Worn every day, these lenses will be able to deliver the treatment for a month.
Glaucoma is a disease of the optic nerve that affects the visual field and increases eye pressure. This eye condition is first treated with eye drops instilled regularly in the eyes to make lower eye pressure. But according to Dr Joseph Ciolino, who led research on this new type of contact lens: “the drops that are instilled in the eyes require good adherence to the treatment on the part of the patient to be fully effective. However, it often happens that patients forget their eye drops voluntarily or not ”.
For the doctor, contact lenses have the advantage of delivering the drug without the patient having to think about it. And if the first trials focused on glaucoma, this form of ocular drug administration could make it possible to treat other pathologies.
These new lenses enclose under their plastic a thin film which contains the drug. Tests showed that after one month of wearing lenses, the concentration of drugs in the eye was the same as one month of eye drops. Another advantage: this treatment can be adapted to corrective lenses.
