Israeli scientists and clinicians appear to have come up with “revolutionary” eye-drops that can correct short- or long-sightedness and eliminate the need for glasses.
Anyone without 20/20 vision can share the struggles of having to wear corrective lenses with contact lenses often leaving eyes tired and dry by the end of the day and finding the perfect frames for glasses being quite a challenge.
Now Nanotechnology could make it possible to correct vision by using eye drops. These so called ‘nano-drops’ have been developed by a team at Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Bar-Ilan University’s Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials.
Shaare Zedek’s Opthalmologest David Smadja presented his teams work at the hospitals research day last month. Together with the team from Bar – Ilan they have developed eye drops filled with nanoparticles to treat near and far sighted patients.
They have been shown to improve both short-sightedness (myopia) and long-sightedness (hyperopia) in tests on pigs, with plans to begin clinical testing on humans later this year.
If the drops are found to improve human vision then the nano-drops solution could eliminate the need for glasses and “revolutionise ophthalmological and optometry treatment”.
Prospective patients would use a smartphone app to scan their eyes, measure their refraction, create a laser pattern then apply a “laser corneal stamping” of an optical pattern onto the corneal surface of their eyes.