Eye drops made from tamarind seeds from the Asian evergreen tree tamarindus indicia show promise as a treatment for dry eye syndrome, according to a report published in the journal BioMedCentral Ophthalmology.
The study by Dr Maurizio Rolando and Dr Cristiana Valente from the University of Genoa, Italy set out to tackle problems arising from available preparations for dry eye syndrome which have limited period of effective action.
As part of the study, 30 dry-eye sufferers received three or more applications per day of either tamarind seed polysaccharide (TSP) or hyaluronic acid (HA) for 90 days.
Research findings revealed that TSP eye drops performed as well as the HA drops on several objective measures of dry eye syndrome.
Furthermore, the TSP drops did a significantly better job of relieving key symptoms - namely, trouble blinking, ocular burning and foreign-body sensation.
Report authors conclude that this study paves the way for a larger research project to establish further the performance and safety of TSP compared with HA.
'The significant differences between products in some subjective symptom scores are interesting and warrant further investigation,' write Rolando and Valente.