New Medicine Could Replace Reading Glasses with Eye Drops

Posted by EditorDavid

on Saturday December 11, 2021 @03:34PM from the eye-or-nay dept.

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  Are they calling it "Retinax"?

  On a more serious note - I don't find my reading glasses so onerous that I'd want to spend $80/month to replace them with eye drops. Not to mention all the potential issues using these drops might introduce (e.g. poorer vision when driving).

  • I can buy enough reading glasses for $80 to sprinkle them through the house and always have a pair within reach wherever I go.

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      $80/mo is too much, but I'm not too discouraged by it since the cost pre-launch may have little to do with the cost 5 years from now.

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        It's been a while since pharmaceuticals have actually decreased in price.

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    My reading glasses cost $5 and last for years, so $80/mo is a deal killer.

    Also, I don't want to wait for 15 minutes for the drops to take effect. When I want to read something, I want to read it immediately.

    The drops work by shrinking the pupil to a pinhole, making seeing in dim light very difficult. How long until normal vision returns?

    You can get the same effect with heroin, which also causes pupils to constrict. The effect can be reversed with atropine, a neurotoxin extracted from the belladonna nights

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      "The drops work by shrinking the pupil to a pinhole, making seeing in dim light very difficult. How long until normal vision returns?"

      No need, the cops will book you after having seen those eyes.

  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Saturday December 11, 2021 @04:19PM (#62070425)

    I don't find my reading glasses so onerous that I'd want to spend $80/month to replace them with eye drops.

    This medicine is obviously targeted at people who are allergic to reading glasses -- like women on a first date... Duh.

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  • Iâ(TM)m in a phase three trial for the same eye drops but made by a different company. Speaking from experience, they work. Amazingly well. The first time I tried it, I put the drops in and then a few minutes later, Iâ(TM)m thinking what nice fonts the web page is using because they are so readable. I know there is another company that is also running their stuff through a phase three trial so there will be at least three companies making it. Iâ(TM)d imagine this stuff will be as cheap as eye drops in the future. One downside is at least the stuff Iâ(TM)m trying needs to be refrigerated. Not sure on the other companies.
• Here I was hoping that they're figured out some way to reverse age-related hardening of the crystallin proteins in the eye, but, no, they're just slightly improving on the effect you get from those plastic pinhole glasses.

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    That's they way I view this as well (no pun intended) (really). The drops just reduce the size of the pupil for a few hours. Which also means you'll need a brighter reading light.

    • Lawsuit Magnet.

      So you trip walking to the bathroom because everything looks dim.

  • by Walt Dismal ( 534799 ) on Saturday December 11, 2021 @04:11PM (#62070397)

    There is a way to reduce the hardening. I used one of the n-acetyl carnosine drops products with success, but it took too much time daily (instill drops in AM and PM). It reduced the lens stiffness and my optometrist measured a one and a fraction diopter change too over time. In the end I resorted to regular cataract surgery though.

    Note that the crystallin aggregation into clumps is caused by electrolyte imbalance (crystallin floats in the lens cells in a colloid; excessive dry eyes changes that and the protein then electrostatically cross-links). I specifically traced my onset to working 16 hour days in contact lenses, beware. Also, after surgery I stopped wearing contact lenses and then with more oxygen to the cornea, its optical characteristics changed for the better. CLs certainly have pros and cons. If one works long hours in startups like me, get glasses instead of CLs.

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      Nerd/jk

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      Thanks for the imfo, cheching with my ophtalmologist and friend now

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    They're reproducing the effect that you get when you use a *bright light*.

    If you're getting just a *little* near-sighted with age, a high intensity reading lamp can make it possible to read nearly as effortlessly as you did when you were twenty years younger. The main use case I can see for this is reading in situations where a high intensity lamp isn't practical, or perhaps on backlight screens where you can't set the back light very high.

• Pilocarpine, old glaucoma drug with a new approved indication and no doubt special higher price. I would market it as "Squint in a Bottle". Diagnostic confusion: opiates, organophosphate insecticides and chemical warfare agents.

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    And don’t forget it’s close cousin in fabrication “safety squints”.

• Multifocal contacts for myopia work in the exact opposite way. Distance eyesight, especially in daytime, is with very constricted pupils. So the smaller diameter of the contact covering just the constricted pupil is designed to correct far-distance vision (like a normal contact for myopia). However, the area of the contact outside of the constricted pupil area does not correct for distance as much. So when you're indoors and reading and looking at near objects, your pupils are very dilated, and the contact

• wouldn't making the reading light stronger also reduce pupil size

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    Exactly the same effect as the eye drops, but instant. I have replaced all my incandescent bulbs with 100 watt equivalent (13 watt) daylight (5500K) bulbs and it works wonderfully!!

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    Yes, it would, but this works in circumstances were you can not control the lighting a all, or if the brighter lights inconvenience people arround you (say your spouse and offspring, or perhaps coworkers).

• This has been known for ages in the scuba diving community.

  Quite a lot of people dive with masks with a Black silicone seal, but if you have vission troubles (nearsighted or Astigmatism) but is not oh so big, it behooves you to dive with a trasparent seal mask, that way, the extra periperal light forces your pupil to contract, and makes your eyesigh sharper.

  If is actually bigger, you need to go for diving with contact lenses or a corrective mask.

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• I could buy a single set of reading glasses for $30, but they are asking $80 a month for this.

  I could see this being good for special occasions. Going skiing, scuba diving, going on TV, etc.

  Otherwise, not worth it (excluding people with > 100 million US in the bank.)

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    My Ophalmologist is even more agressive, he recomended me to go for intraocular lenses to combat presbicia. And he did it unto himself when he got presbicia and started needing special eyeglasses to operate. I decided to waint until if/when i get cataracts.

    Having said that, some people (like you) go for reading glases, others go for Bifocals, others (like me) go for 2 sets of glasses, one for general use, other for medium range (which is even more expensive)...

    Having said that, is cool to have another tool

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    You can get usable reading glasses at Dollar Tree.

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      Yes, provided that both eyes need near enough the same strength, and you don't need to correct for astigmatism.

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        They make clip on flip up reading glasses. Found them when the eye doctor insisted it was time for to get bifocals. Except I'm only halfway to my arms being too short.

• I'm 40 and the nearest point I can focus is now maybe 10 inches away In most light. Light didn't use to play a part in the past, and obviously I had greater range of focus.

  So, I've never ever use glasses or lenses. Sometimes I have to use safety glasses. The feeling those give is sort of like those cats you see on YouTube where people have duct taped their backs. There's all sorts of lens flare and aberration from even fresh out of the pack safety glasses that I get completely disoriented.

  That aside, tradi

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    every time us people who use glasses get a new pair, we experience the same you do. The bigger the lenses, the worse the effects. Then, in a few days (11 tops), we get used to it

• Anyone old enough to have taken photography class in high school with an actual film SLR will remember the depth of field trick. They might also remember that if you have a wide depth of field, you either need a high ISO film or a very long exposure in low-light condition to make up the difference.

  For DSLR fans, that means cranking up the electronic gain and/or the exposure.

  Your eye can't do either. If your pupils are contracted, yeah you have high depth of field. And probably it "fixes" a little near-sightedness and astigmatism. But you also can't see jack shit in low light and if the drops work as advertised, you won't be able to until they wear off.

  What an idiotic medicine. I hope to God the bottle warning label tells the "gee I can fix anything with modern medicine" crowd to not try to drive at night after taking this stuff to save themselves the five seconds of putting on reading glasses.

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    Shoebox pinhole camera was a fun project. Then Group f/64 and dancing around the diffraction limit. This goop might be useful for someone who regularly does close-in crafts for several hours at a time, but apart from that it seems spurious.
• "Headaches" as a side effect typically means eyestrain, presumably because the eye is having trouble focusing properly when using the drug. They also say it won't work as well for people over 65 because of the aging of the eye. That's probably means that the eye's ability to contract the pupil declines with age, so the drug won't work for them.

• If you go to the manufacturer's website and read the prescribing information https://www.rxabbvie.com/pdf/vuity_pi.pdf%20%20 [rxabbvie.com], you can see on page 5, Section 14, Clinical Studies, that the efficacy is actually very modest, 31% vs. 8% in the first trial, and 26% vs. 11% in the second (vuity vs. vehicle; "vehicle" here means placebo drops). While statistically significant, in practice what this means is that maybe at most 1/3 of people who try these drops would expect to receive substantial clinical benefit t

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    Anecdotal: After my Lasik in 1998, I suffer from Dry Eye, and have been using artificial tears, 3 or more times a day, every day, even (specially) when on the beach scuba diving. The risk of infection because of constantly using eye drops has been greatly exagerated.

• That's useless. Turning CBS off would be a much more substantial "life-changer" if this is the shit they report.

• I guess I either need this stuff or I have a one track mind or both.

• There's always a catch...

  Wear glasses or take the risk of going blind. I think I'll stick with glasses.

• Instead of stopping down the eye to f/16 to give you clear vision only in direct sunlight, invent an eyedrop that keeps the eyes dilated. This would allow you to, by moving your head back and forth, isolate and focus on just one clear subject in your field of vision. Bonus points if the drops also give you feathery bokeh for the out-of-focus parts of your visual field. And...amaze your friends with the low-light performance!