A new type of contact lens has been created that has been designed to deliver eye medication to users in controlled doses. The new contact lenses have been developed by a team of biomedical and chemical engineers from Alabama’s Auburn University.
Normally drugs which have been administered to patients eyes are washed out within around 3o minutes after being applied. To help by-pass this wash out problem, the team has developed a disposable contact lens that can administer medication you the wearers eye, such as antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and/or anti-allergy drugs several times a day.
The team leader and chemical engineer Mark Byrne explains:
“Results indicate that our lenses release a constant drug concentration for the entire time the lens is worn. This is about 100 times better than the conventional therapy, which consists of drug delivery via eye drops. With numbers that impressive, this technology is a real game-changer.” – “Eye drops and ointments make up more than 90 percent market share, but are an inefficient, inconvenient method,” – “Our lenses offer the increased efficacy and efficiency of drug delivery, which translates to better eye health.”
“These aren’t contacts soaked in a medication that only release for a very short time. We are administering a drug through controlled release by creating drug memory in the lens structure while maintaining all of the other lens properties.”
Source: Gizmag
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