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Medicated Lenses Could Make Eye Drops Obsolete

by Tim Stevens on July 23, 2009 at 12:09 PM

Putting in eye drops is a pain. Applying drops into your eyes is a hard enough challenge, made even more frustrating by the fact that one mistimed blink will find you with drops streaming down your cheeks. Annoyances like this have led to bigger problems, like 59-percent of glaucoma patients not using their medicated eye drops despite the risk of going blind, Wired reports. To remedy this, researchers have developed contact lenses that can automatically dispense medication where and when it's needed.

Described in a paper published in the July issue of Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, the lenses deliver a steady, concentrated stream of medication over a period of 30 days. The paper's co-author, Daniel Kohane, told Wired, "The main way our lens differs is that it can provide large amounts of drug released at constant rates for long periods of time, which previous discoveries have not been able to do."

The drugs, suspended in a gel around the edge of the lens, don't affect vision. Right now testing has only been performed in labs, but animal tests are coming soon, and hopefully within a year these will be on human eyes. [From: Wired/CNN]

Tags: contact, contact lens, ContactLens, eyes, glaucoma, lens, medication, vision

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