Glasses be gone! The first FDA-approved eye drops that clear up age-related blurry near vision (presbyopia) have been introduced to the market in the US, which means that the estimated 128 million Americans affected by the common condition of presbyopia now have an alternative to reading glasses.
Presbyopia is a normal part of aging. It happens because as we age, our lenses start to harden which means that it begins to become more difficult for our eye muscles to adjust them so that they can change their focal points. That’s why people affected by presbyopia are often seen holding their reading material at an arm’s length.
The revolutionary eye drops, called Vuity, are administered once daily to the eyes. Its active ingredient pilocarpine stimulates the eye so that pupil sizes are reduced. Reducing the size of the pupil allows for increased depth of field, which means that more of the image that the eyes take in looks sharper wherever the lens is focused.
The results of the Phase 3 human trials, which involved 750 individuals with presbyopia between the ages of 40 and 55, found that those using Vuity were able to read an extra three or more lines on an optometrist’s vision chart “in mesopic (in low light), high contrast, binocular Distance Corrected Near Visual Acuity (DCNVA), without losing more than one line (five letters) of Corrected Distance Visual Acuity (CDVA) at day 30, hour 3, versus placebo.”
Possible side effects include headaches and eye redness, but these only affected less than five percent of the subjects in the trial, and none of them reported any “serious adverse effects.”
