Key takeaways:
- Lacrifill canalicular gel improved corneal staining and subjective signs whereas lowering irritation.
- Lacrimal is ‘creating a brand new normal of care.’
MINNEAPOLIS — Lacrifill, a canalicular gel for sufferers with dry eye, improves ocular floor irritation, together with in sufferers who switched from conventional occlusion strategies, in keeping with a poster offered at Optometry’s Assembly.
The discovering highlights the potential for Lacrifill (Nordic Pharma), a cross-linked hyaluronic acid spinoff, to have constructive results “in ways in which we weren’t essentially taught in optometry college or in ways in which truly defy among the logic clinically that we’ve identified,” research creator Mile Brujic, OD, FAAO, of Premier Imaginative and prescient Group in Ohio, mentioned in a video presentation.
Lacrifill launched within the U.S. in April 2024.
“Basically what you do is, by means of a cannula that’s bodily positioned on the tip of the syringe, you introduce the Lacrifill gel — basically hyaluronic acid gel — into the cannula and the canalicular tract,” Brujic mentioned. “In doing so, as an alternative of inserting a silicone or an intracanalicular dissolvable plug, you’re truly filling the area with sodium hyaluronate or hyaluronic acid. … We all know that [hyaluronic acid] has properties on the floor of the attention and downregulates irritation, together with MMP-9, IL-6, TNF.”
Utilizing InflammaDry (Quidel), Brujic monitored dry eye sufferers for MMP-9, an indication of ocular floor irritation. He discovered that, in sufferers given Lacrifill after beforehand receiving conventional dissolvable intracanalicular plugs, continual corneal staining “disappeared,” and people who had continual subjective signs “simply obtained higher.”
“However then we noticed one thing else attention-grabbing. We noticed that we might affect irritation ranges on the floor of the attention,” Brujic mentioned. “This boggled my thoughts as a result of … the one different knowledge I might discover was the paper that confirmed that conventional punctal occlusion didn’t both positively or negatively affect irritation.”
Brujic shared three circumstances through which Lacrifill improved irritation ranges.
“That is creating a brand new normal of care,” Brujic mentioned. “Lacrifill is changing into not solely a single-use therapy for these sufferers but additionally an acceptable supplemental therapy in these people who could also be [undergoing treatment] with different brokers.”
Reference:
