Patient compliance can be a struggle when it comes to administering prescription eye drops to treat glaucoma. Researchers are working on a remedy for that in the form of artificial lenses that release glaucoma medication into the eye.
Many older adults dealing with glaucoma also have cataracts that require removal. The artificial lenses that would be implanted into these patients would deliver the glaucoma medication in a time-released manner.
The early-phase clinical trial involved 106 glaucoma patients who were scheduled for cataract surgery. Researchers implanted the experimental lenses that had small pads of the drug bimatoprost into randomly assigned patients. Some received a low dose and others a high dose while the remainder of patients got a standard lens replacement and followed the twice-daily drops protocol of the drug timolol.
Patients were followed up with after a year and 95% of those who had received the drug-releasing lens no longer required glaucoma medication. All study participants will be followed for three years to determine the durability of pressure control in addition to safety of the lens. Two larger clinical trials are also currently underway.
