Goodbye to glasses for presbyopia?

The United States approves the use of an eye drop that corrects it for six hours

Americans already dream of taking off their glasses to see up close. A well-known laboratory in the field of ophthalmology has received the go-ahead to commercialize an eye drop that is said to correct presbyopia for six hours. The company has not yet confirmed whether it will request permission from the European Medicines Agency EMA for its use also in the old continent, but – if what is said is true – everything will come. In the world of drugs, the process is always the same. First, it authorizes the United States, and some time later, usually a few months, the advance reaches Europe. Although the actual scope of the treatment, it seems, remains to be seen. So perhaps what is advertised is not so bad.

Any treatment against presbyopia, especially if the possibility of forgetting the glasses is considered, arouses enormous interest among the population. It is logical. Difficulty focusing on the closest objects is a typical visual defect of aging, which
begins to occur from the age of 45 and it develops until the 60s, to a lesser extent among myopic people.

In fifteen minutes, ready

Vision is possible thanks to a natural lens, called crystalline, a kind of gel whose curvature has the ability to change automatically to perfectly focus on objects at any distance. Near or far.

It works exactly like a camera. With age, the human lens hardens due to the accumulation of proteins, which are decomposed and deposited on it. This loss of flexibility – something that cannot be avoided because it is part of the life cycle – leads to the appearance of presbyopia, which translates into difficulties to see up close (it becomes more complex to read the leaflet of a medicine or the supermarket labels, for example).

The drug approved by the FDA is presented as an eye drop that takes fifteen minutes to take effect and guarantees correct vision for a period of six hours. The drug, dubbed ‘Vuity’ and marketed by the firm Allergan (Abbvie), is “an optimized formula of polocarpine, an established therapeutic treatment for eye care,” the company explained in a statement. Presbyopia affects 40% of the western population, a figure that is estimated to grow by ten points in the next decade as a result of the increasing aging of society.

“Not so new or effective”

The firm has set out to reach a market of 128 million people in the United States, half of the country’s adult population. The approval of this drug “exemplifies our continued search for new and innovative treatments that push the limits of what is possible in eye care,” said Abbvie President Michael Severino.

Could it be so much? Well, no. The Spanish Society of Ophthalmology informed this newspaper yesterday that the whole story about this eye drop, which has been talked about so much over the weekend, “is a more ‘marketinian’ question, of publicity, than of clinical efficacy.”

The drops against presbyopia, as explained by Spanish ophthalmologists, are valid «for a specific situation or compromise in which you may need to see up close without glasses. But – they clarify – they cannot be recommended for regular and daily use three times a day due to the side effects and intolerance caused by pilocarpine “, which is the active principle of the drug. From nausea, diarrhea and vomiting to more serious ones, such as vision and heart rhythm disturbances, according to the Atlanta Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on its official website.

The first drops were patented by the Argentine ophthalmologist Jorge Benozzi, who recently died in 1999. What they basically achieve is to contract the pupil to gain visual acuity in adverse light conditions. “This has been talked about for a long time in Argentina, Colombia and Spain,” add the SEO ophthalmologists. Now it has been approved by the FDA “and it looks like they have discovered the gunpowder.” “At the moment – they add – they are not going to market it in Europe.”