Omega 3 eye-drops mentioned in First Magazine

[yoganut]

Browsing thru April 2008 'First' magazine this morning and noticed a small blurb about how 'Study: Omega 3 drops can cure dry eyes'...I read further...

"So says M. Reza Dana, M.D. His team found that eyedrops made from alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) eased symptoms of dry eye syndrome such as burning plus reversed corneal damage. The reason: ALA reduced eye inflammation and supports the eye's tear film, hastening healing. Follow-up studies are in the works."

Source: M.Reza Dana, M.D., senior scientist and professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School.

Did I miss something? Has anyone heard of this before?

Rebecca: is there any way you can contact Dr. Reza and find out more? I'd love to be part of the study.

[Rebecca Petris]

It was reported on a few months ago. Here's my Digest entry on it along with the abstract of the study.

If I sounded sarcastic in the blog post, it's because I'm frankly tired of seeing too much hype around things that are so far away from real-world results. Everybody and his uncle is into dry eye cures. We've got more than 25 different dry eye therapies in some stage of clinical trials, and those are just the ones I know about. Until they make it to Phase III clinicals, I don't personally put a whole lot of stake in the potential. Even then, many of them do not make it through further testing because they do not give significant improvement to symptoms. A couple of years ago we were pretty excited about Rebamipide and I knew doctors who were seeing good results with it. Then, kaput.

So far as I know they are not yet recruiting (there's nothing on FDA clinical trial database about this). My guess would be that they aren't until 3rd or 4th quarter this year at the earliest but I'll try and find out or if anybody else does please let me know. Unfortunately just plain don't have time to keep upon it all so I appreciate any updates others have.

Incidentally for those with interest in the Omega 3 type stuff here's another one that was reported on relatively recently.

[yoganut]

ok, guess I jumped the gun abit.
thanks for the information.

[Lucy]

The Dry Eye Zone board is an excellent source of information covering several years of "false starts" on dry eye "cures." As Rebecca said, everyone claims to have the fix. If the fix was to be found, we'd have found it by now and bottling and selling it.

It's just the newer folks have to start at ground zero and go through all the different sources of dry eye help to get to what helps them. Our experiences on this board, though, are important and can give one an idea of what works and what may not. Lucy

P.S. Important to remember we're all different, but there is no magic pill.