"Viva" multidose & unpreserved

[charmee]

Hi,

There's a new brand of eyedrops called Viva, "for people who use drops more than 4X a day".

They are in a multidose bottle, preservative-free, and you are directed to use it for up to 30 days, then toss it.

Active ingredient is Polysorbate 80, 1%. It also has Vitamin A and other ingredients as antioxidants and free-radical scavengers that they claim help healing and TBUT.

The bottle and the website doesn't say "hypotonic", but the website does say something about how it corrects the tonicity of concentrated tears.

I paid $8.99 for a 15ml bottle (which is dirt-cheap for a month of unpreserved tears).

I've only used them a few times since yesterday, and all I can really say is they're a watery drop. Personally, I like that, but I think most of you use the thicker drops. Here's the link to their website

http://www.cornealscience.com/cornea...ww/VIVA%20Info

Charmee

[neil0502]

Not sure they're new ... since a quick search of the forum brought them up in a handful of threads going back a year or so ... but certainly interesting to get your first-hand feedback on how they work for you.

[Rebecca Petris]

Viva drops have been around for ages... way back in the 90's if memory serves. Not widely available though. They launched a bigger marketing effort for them at the AAO last fall so they are probably going to get a bit better known. I've seen them in Rite Aids lately.

[charmee]

Really! I had no idea! I thought I'd seen it all, but now I know better. Sorry for the false report.

Charmee

[Rebecca Petris]

No no, not at all, might not be new but it'll be new to many members anyway. There are several relatively obscure products out there and sometimes the only way people learn about them is places like this. I may be wrong but I am thinking Viva was never in drugstores until recently.

I was waiting for something at Rite Aid recently and their dry eye shelves were amazing. They had everything I'd ever heard of and also I think at least 5 products I'd either never heard of or had never seen in drugstores before, including a couple more homeopathic ones.

My memory of Viva drops is somewhat biassed, I have to admit. I believe Dr. Holly once said they tested a bottle of Viva for vitamin A and didn't find any present. (Mind i can't substantiate that with any documentation, it's just a recollection.) Retinyl palmitate is notoriously unstable - that was one of the challenges in successfully formulating Dakrina.