Presbyopia is not just common, it’s inevitable. So what is Presbyopia and can you escape its impact in your life? The mayo clinic has this to say about it, “Presbyopia is the gradual loss of your eyes' ability to focus on nearby objects. It's a natural, often annoying part of aging. Presbyopia usually becomes noticeable in your early to mid-40s and continues to worsen until around age 65. You may become aware of presbyopia when you start holding books and newspapers at arm's length to be able to read them. A basic eye exam can confirm presbyopia. You can correct the condition with eyeglasses or contact lenses. You might also consider surgery.”
So the bad news is no matter where you live or what you do for a living, around the age of 40-45 you WILL start to struggle to see up close. And it’s true that until recently, contacts, readers and progressive glasses were your only options. But now there is a new eyedrop to help you focus up close, and in today’s blog we’re going to talk about it!
Welcome back to the eye school blog, with me Dr. D, where I teach you about products and treatments related to dry eye syndrome and eye beauty so you can have healthy, beautiful, comfortable eyes. Presbyopia is age related blurry near vision. it’s common and progressive and it reduces the eyes ability to focus on near objects.
An Eyedrop for Presbyopia (Age-Related Farsightedness) Instead of Glasses
Vuity is a brand new first of its kind once daily prescription eye drop that improves near and intermediate vision without impacting your distance vision for adults with presbyopia. Introducing Vuity!
Vuity is a formulation of pilocarpine which is an established eyecare therapeutic from the realm of glaucoma management but now it has been reformulated specifically to treat age related blurry near vision. Beauty uses the eyes' ability to reduce pupil size improving near and intermediate vision while maintaining distance vision.
How’d it do in trials? The FDA approval of Vuity back in October 20 21 was based on data from two phase 3 clinical trials called Gemini one in Gemini II. These studies evaluate the advocacy safety and tolerability ability for the treatment of presbyopia. There were 750 participants in the study aged 40 to 55 years old with a diagnosis of presbyopia.
Patients were put into beauty or placebo groups. The participants use one drop of unity or placebo once daily in each eye. The study showed that patients using Vuity gained three lines so that means the ability to read three additional lines on a reading chart or more in low light high contrast binocular distance corrected near visual acuity without losing more than one line at a distance.
So what that means in English is that patients were able to gain three or more lines up close while not losing more than one line in the distance. So if your starting vision at distance is 2020 this drop Is capable of keeping your vision no worse than 2025. In the study adverse events were frequent however the adverse events that were recorded were headache and eye redness.
We Are Sharing Important Safety Information Directly From The VUITY Website:
“Do not use VUITY if you are allergic to any of the ingredients.”
“VUITY may cause temporary dim or dark vision. Use caution when driving at night or performing hazardous activities in poor lighting.”
“Temporary problems when changing focus between near and distant objects may occur. Do not drive or use machinery if vision is not clear (e.g., blurred vision).”
“Seek immediate medical care if you experience sudden onset of flashing lights, floaters, or vision loss.”
“If you wear contact lenses, they should be removed prior to VUITY use. Wait 10 minutes after dosing before reinserting contact lenses.”
“Do not touch the dropper tip to any surface as this may contaminate the contents.”
“If more than one topical eye medication is being used, the medicines must be administered at least 5 minutes apart.”
“The most common side effects are headache and eye redness. These are not all the possible side effects of VUITY.”
“You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088.”
My Thoughts on This Eyedrop for Presbyopia
My thoughts! My understanding is that the drop duration is about six hours at the most. When you’re considering what to do about your presbyopia you certainly have several options: you could do over-the-counter reading glasses, you could do progressive glasses or you can even do multifocal contact lenses. The advantage of doing something like reading glasses or a prescription pair of glasses or contacts is that that vision is consistent and it can last all day.
The trouble with beauty in my perspective is that the duration is only about six hours. I’d love to see a presbyopia management eyedrop that’s gonna last an entire 12 hour day. I think that’s gonna be much more useful to patients than just having a six hour duration.
Impact on DES? One of the adverse effects noted in the study was Eye redness. , so it’s very likely that if you have dry eyes already this may not be the best drop for you. It is worth noting that the preservative within Vuity is benzalkonium chloride or BAK. BAK is known to have adverse effects on the ocular surface and even contribute to the death of corneal conjunctival cells.
So therefore use caution if you have known Dry Eye or other ocular surface issues like allergies or even just sensitivities to preservatives. It is important to know that this is preserved with BAK which causes problems in a lot of patients. If you have presbyopia undoubtedly you were very excited to hear about a once daily eyedrop to correct your near vision issues.
Make sure to let me know in the comments if you’ve gotten a chance to try Vuity and let me know how well it worked for you. On the horizon are several other new presbyopia drops and I’m especially excited about one in particular that shows promise to have a longer duration of action closer to the 12 hours that I think would be ideal and a presbyopia correction drop.
Reference Links:
Pharma Tx for Presby https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/11/5/1385
Pilocarpine/Presbyopia https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40123-022-00482-2