New Contact Lens May Replace Eye Drops

Posted on July 29, 2009 in Consumer Goods, Health & Medicine

Struggling to put in messy eye drops? You aren’t alone, and there soon may be an alternative. Scientists have developed a contact lens that delivers medication gradually to patients who suffer from glaucoma or dry eyes.

The new lens is much more efficient than eye drops, which often drip down the cheeks or into the back of the throat. A paper published in the July issue of Investigative Opthamology & Visual Science details the drug-dispensing lens: it releases the medication continuously for more than 30 days. Previous attempts to create such a lens only released a small amount of the drug over a long period of time, said co-author Daniel Kohane of Harvard Medical School.

The researchers described the new design like a pita pocket, with a wad of drug in the middle of a hydrogel exterior. The drug-containing part of the lens should not affect the wearer’s vision. Although up to 59 percent of glaucoma patients regularly skip their eye drops, developers hope that the convenience factor of the lens will improve this statistic.

The lens is still in development, but scientists hope that it can be tested on humans within a year. If all goes well, pesky drops could be gone in the blink of an eye.