Color-changing contact lens could enhance monitoring of eye disease treatmentsFor all the good they

Color-changing contact lens could enhance monitoring of eye disease treatments

For all the good they do, eye drops and ointments have one major drawback: It’s hard to tell how much of the medication is actually getting to the eye. Now in a study appearing in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, scientists report that they have developed a contact lens that changes color as drugs are released. This visual indicator could help eye doctors and patients readily determine whether these medications are where they should be.

Eyes are adept at keeping things out. When something ventures into or toward an eye, the lids blink and tears start rapidly flowing to avoid infection and damage from foreign objects. These processes are usually helpful, but they can hinder the uptake of much-needed medications. Studies suggest that less than 5 percent of drugs in eye drops and ointments are absorbed, and much of the absorbed medication ends up in the bloodstream instead of the eye, causing side effects. Contact lenses may be a more effective way to deliver drugs directly to the eye, but real-time monitoring of drug release is still a challenge. So Dawei Deng and Zhouying Xie sought to create a drug-delivering contact lens that would change color as the medication is released into the eye.

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