Contact Lenses as a Vehicle for Drug Delivery

March is Workplace Eye Wellness and Eye Donor Awareness Month. However, people know it is the beginning of the spring season along with eye allergies that cause patients to rush to eye care providers for help. Now this year telehealth -which I call Google Health- will bring contact lenses patients to you with new questions.

It happened with me today when a patient asked me about a contact lens that delivers or relieves drugs. And I replied: there have been studies and experiments but nothing is yet being developed. Well in fact and what I have learned later during the day is that indeed that is something imminent about such contact lenses. I always say that Glaucoma patients are well-instructed patients but Contact lenses are the most instructed patients. They follow every innovation and every piece of news that relates to vision correction. This explains why if glaucoma patients know about hypertension however, contact lenses patients know about eyeglasses, contact lenses, eye drops, and refractive surgeries independent if they plan to do a refractive surgery or not.

In case you haven’t heard the news, and to be prepared to talk to your contact lenses patients and be the one who delivers the news, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) has approved the first combination contact lens that provides vision correction and an antihistamine drug to help relieve symptoms for people experiencing itchy allergy eyes. Johnson & Johnson Vision announced the approval yesterday that Acuvue Theravision with Ketotifen is the first and only vision correction contact lens that relieves allergy drugs. The lens contains ketotifen, an H1 histamine receptor antagonist for the prevention of itch associated with eye allergy.

Researchers have been long experimenting and working on finding ways to administer drugs using contact lenses. They claimed that employing contact lenses to deliver drugs will increase bioavailability by 50% compared to eye drops, thus significantly increasing efficacy. Acuvue Theravision may be the first step to deliver allergy drugs the next step will most probably be to deliver antibiotics, prostaglandins, beta-blockers, or a combination.