Recent advances in drug treatments for dry eye disease

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Dry eye disease (DED) is a common ocular condition with a significant impact on patients’ quality of life. Conventional treatments include behavioral changes, tear substitutes, and anti-inflammatory agents; however, recent advances in the understanding of DED pathogenesis have opened the way to the development of novel treatment strategies able to target several pathways involved in the onset and persistence of DED.

Areas covered

Literature search was conducted on PubMed and Scopus around the term ‘dry eye disease’ and others involving its pathophysiology and therapeutic strategy. The primary focus was on recent drugs approved by FDA or under investigation in phase 3 clinical trials. Google and ClinicalTrials.gov were used for obtaining information about the status of FDA approval and ongoing clinical trials.

Expert opinion

Due to its multifaced pathogenesis, DED management is often challenging, and patients’ needs are frequently unmet. Recently, several novel treatments have been either FDA-approved or studied in late-phase trials. These novel drugs target-specific biological components of the ocular surface and reduce inflammation and ocular pain. Additionally, new drug delivery systems allow for increased bioavailability, improve effective dosing, and minimize ocular side effects. These advances in drug therapies show real promise for better management of DED patients.

KEYWORDS:

• Dry eye
• treatment
• DED
• eye drops
• RCT
• randomized clinical trials

Article highlights

• Dry eye disease (DED) is a very common eye condition that severely impacts patients’ quality of both vision and life.

• Advances in our understanding of DED pathophysiology have shed a light into multiple novel pathways involved in the onset and persistence of the disease.

• Novel therapeutic targets have been identified, and a strong research interest has been put in the development of novel treatment strategies for DED, as confirmed by the number of new drugs either recently approved or under late phases of clinical research.

• Novel drug delivery systems allow for greater drug bioavailability and show promises for reducing eye drops instillations, thus contributing to improving DED management and increasing patients’ quality of life.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers of this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.