Nearsightedness: Atropine Eye Drops may Slow Progression in Kids

A recent clinical trial suggests that the first medication therapy to reduce the progression of nearsightedness in children could be on the way.

Results of a recent clinical trial point to the potential development of the first medication to delay the progression of nearsightedness in children.

Nearsightedness affects one in every three people globally, and the global prevalence of myopia is expected to reach 50% by 2050.

Atropine Could Delay Progression of Myopia in Children

A daily drop in each eye of a low dose of atropine, a medicine used to dilate pupils, was found to be more effective than a placebo in minimizing eyeglass prescription changes and suppressing eye elongation in nearsighted children aged 6 to 10 ().

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Multifocal contact lenses are found to slow down the progression of myopia in children. They slow myopic progression to about 43% over three years.

‘A clinical trial shows that atropine eye drops may reduce myopia progression in children. #myopia #atropine’

That elongation leads to myopia, or nearsightedness, which starts in young kids and continues to get worse into the teen years before leveling off in most people.

In addition to requiring life-long vision correction, nearsightedness increases the risk for retinal detachment, macular degeneration, cataracts, and glaucoma later in life - and most corrective lenses don't do anything to stop myopia progression.

Target Eye Elongation to Prevent Visual Impairment

"The idea of keeping eyeballs smaller isn't just so people's glasses are thinner - it would also be so that in their 70s they don't suffer visual impairment," said lead author Karla Zadnik, Professor and dean of the College of Optometry at The Ohio State University.

Animal studies years ago hinted at atropine's ability to slow the growth of the eye. Still, the full-strength drug's interference with near vision and concerns about pupil dilation hindered early considerations of its potential as a human therapy for myopia.

Here's How You can Identify Children Most Likely to Develop Myopia
Kids who grow up with normal vision are slightly farsighted when they are in first grade; therefore, the potential for myopia can be detected at this young age.

More recent research has suggested a low dose of atropine might help.

In the study, published in JAMA Ophthalmology, the team assessed the drug's effectiveness in 489 children aged 6 to 10.

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The drugs' safety was assessed in a larger sample of 573 participants, including children as young as 3 and up to age 16.

The most common side effects were sensitivity to light, allergic conjunctivitis, eye irritation, dilated pupils, and blurred vision, although reports of these side effects were few.

Gel may Help Slow Down Myopia Progression in Kids
A new study from University of Oklahoma Department of Ophthalmology has found that daily use of medication called pirenzepine gel can slow down myopia progression in children, say researchers.

The experimental drug is made without preservatives, and if federally approved as a therapy, would be distributed in single-use packaging for convenience and to prevent contamination, the researchers noted.

Reference:

Efficacy and Safety of 0.01% and 0.02% Atropine for the Treatment of Pediatric Myopia Progression Over 3 Years: A Randomized Clinical Trial - (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37261839/)

Source-IANS