If new eye drops developed by a team of Israeli ophthalmologists work as well in human eyes as they do in pigs, eyeglasses may be a thing of the past.
Led by Dr. David Smadja, a research team at Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Bar-Ilan University’s Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials created the eye drops that have been found to repair the corneas and improve short and long sightedness. The nanoparticle solution called “nanodrops” was successfully used on pigs’ corneas.
The nanodrops will undergo clinical trials on humans later this year. According to Dr. David Smadja, the eye-drops could revolutionize ophthalmological and optometry treatments of patients suffering from myopia, hyperopia and other refractive conditions.
Speaking at a conference, Dr. Smadjia indicated that nanodrops could even be used to replace multifocal lenses and allow people to see objects from different distances.
“This is a new concept for correcting refractory problems,” Smadja said. How often the drops will need to be applied is unclear at this point.
The experiment led by Dr. Smadja and his colleagues involved analyzing refractive errors of pig eyes before and after instillation of nanodrops filled with various concentration of synthetic nanoparticles. The results showed significant improvement in error correction for both myopic (near-sightedness) and hyperopic (far-sightedness) refractive error, according to a research report.
Patients would open an application on their smartphone, measure their eyes’ refraction, create a laser pattern and then apply “laser corneal stamping” of an optical pattern onto the corneal surface of their eyes.
“This isn’t the first time that the use of nanotechnology in eye-drops was investigated. Increasing research in this field has opened new doors in the field of medicine and surgery,” notes a report in Interesting Engineering. “There has been significant research done already to develop nanotechnology-based systems to treat ocular diseases.”
