Official News page 5

REAL LIFE NEWS: GET DRUGS FROM YOUR CONTACT LENSES

by Hazed

I hate putting drops in my eyes; I find it hard to stop flinching at the moment of truth, causing the liquid to splash onto my face instead of landing in my eyes where it's supposed to. So I can sympathize with anyone who has to take eye drops many times a day.

Now there's a new method of putting medication in the eyes: contact lenses that dispense drugs gradually over time. The lenses have been developed by researchers at the Children's Hospital, Boston.

They've come up with a two-layer lens with an inner drug-bearing biodegradable poloymer film. In laboratory testing, the prototype lenses dispensed a drug for 30 days at a controlled rate. They see applications in conditions such as glaucoma and dry-eye which require frequent daily eye drops. They plan to begin testing on humans as soon as possible.

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