Atropine and the Goldilocks problem

A tropine has been on our collective radar for myopia control for a long time. I am sure many people are wondering, ‘Why is it taking so long?’  

A few years back, when the first studies came out of Singapore (including the ground-breaking Atom2 study), it seemed that low-dose atropine was going to be the game-changer for myopia. At a dose of 0.01%, atropine offered the prospect of good efficacy at slowing myopia progression with few side effects and no rebound.  

The logical next step was to conduct trials in Western populations to confirm that it also worked in our patients. It was also important to show that low dose atropine would be acceptable to kids in this part of the world, who are not famed for their love of eye drops. Our group at the Centre for Eye Research Ireland and several others started planning just that sort of trial in 2018-19.