Contact lens drug system offers better dose delivery

Researchers from the UCLA School of Dentistry have created a contact lens drug delivery system that may have less severe side-effects than traditional glaucoma medication and improve patients’ ability to comply with their prescribed treatments.

They have bound together glaucoma-fighting drugs with nano-diamonds and embedded them in contact lenses, enabling timolol maleate to be released into the eye when it interacts with the patients’ tears.

Researchers pointed out that problems with using eye drops included difficulties sticking to the prescribed dose and side-effects in the eye and other parts of the body. They added that the new technology showed great promise for sustained glaucoma treatment and, as a side benefit, the nanodiamond drug compound improved the durability of the contact lenses. Even with the nanodiamonds embedded, the lenses still gave favourable levels of optical clarity, and, although mechanical testing verified that they were stronger than normal lenses, there were no apparent changes to water content.