Essilor Stellest to Slow Myopia Progression

Last week Johnson & Johnson Vision has announced FDA approval for its orthokeratology (ortho-K) myopia control contact lens. Acuvue Abiliti Overnight is the first and only FDA-approved ortho-K lens for myopia management. Three days ago, Essilor announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted the “Breakthrough Device” designation to its Essilor Stellest spectacle lens. This new generation lens developed by Essilor to correct myopia and slow down the progression of myopia in children. The results from the recent clinical study illustrated the effectiveness of Essilor Stellest lens in slowing the progression of myopia in children with myopia in China. The results from the 2-year clinical trial were presented at the virtual Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting.

The study was conducted by Jinhua Bao, an associate director of the Wenzhou Medical University – Essilor International Research Centre. The researchers used a random sample of 170 Chinese children (8 to 13 years) with myopia between 0.75 D and 4.75 D for whom they administered three spectacle designs to wear. The three designs consisted of highly aspherical lenslets (HAL), slightly aspherical lenslets (SAL), and single vision lenses (SVL) as control lenses. Children adapted to spectacles in less than a week and they wore them from 13.4 hours to 13.9 hours per day.

The trial results showed that the eye growth of 90% of the children wearing Essilor lenslets was similar or slower than SVL children after a period of one year. However, over two years children with SVL progressed fast, while HAL slowed myopia progression by 50% and SAL by 29%. This demonstrates that the higher the asphericity the larger the effect of the treatment. Similarly, axial elongation progression was larger in SVL patients. SVL axial elongation in two years progressed by 0.69 mm, HAL slowed progression by 0.35 mm, and SAL slowed progression by 0.18 mm.

Essilor first launched its Stellest in China and now is further rolling it out in more countries.