Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0314719 (dry eye)
 2,625 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Ophthalmic drugs, both diagnostic and therapeutic, play a central role in new developments in optometry, particularly as practitioners extend their involvement in primary care. Optometrists now dilate more patients in routine practice, and this brings increasing concern about the risk of provoking acute closed angle glaucoma (CAG) attacks. It would seem that the risk of inducing acute CAG is far outweighed by the potential benefit of examining the eye through a dilated pupil. Driving difficulties, reported subjectively to be the result of glare, are frequently encountered by patients after dilation, and advice from the College of Optometrists is welcomed. The local anaesthetic proxymetacaine 0.5% is now marketed in the UK in preservative-free unit-dose applicators both alone and in combination with fluorescein, and is a more comfortable alternative to existing anaesthetics in unit-dose form. The second half of this paper includes a summary of the background to recent developments, as the UK profession takes its first steps towards the use of ocular therapeutic agents. Finally, some exciting new therapeutic preparations for use in the treatment of glaucoma, allergic eye disease, and dry eye conditions are discussed.
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PMID:An overview of the current drugs scene. 969 28

Second leading cause of blindness worldwide, glaucoma is an optic neuropathy related mainly but not exclusively to an increase of intraocular pressure. Angle closure glaucoma is related to a blockade of aqueous humor to the trabecular meshwork, whereas open-angle glaucoma is a degeneration of the trabecular meshwork, the filter that allows aqueous outflow from the eye. Many improvements have been made in terms of diagnosis, follow-up and treatments, although the treatment of glaucoma is restricted to control intraocular pressure, in order to prevent optic nerve degeneration or to stop the progression of the disease toward blindness. The first line therapy is based on topical medications that are administered for the whole life span. Although globally efficient, these treatments, and most likely the preservative included in the excipient to prevent bottle contamination, induce side effects in the long-term that may impair the quality of life, patient compliance or directly induce ocular surface changes like inflammatory cytokine release, or tear film destruction, with further dry eye disease and chronic inflammation. A large body of evidence has been accumulated, showing that benzalkonium chloride, the preservative mainly used, is toxic over the long run and plays a role in such ocular surface impairment. Therefore efforts have been made in the last decade to eliminate or replace this compound, providing safer therapies to the patients. Furthermore, the identification of chemokines as playing a role in the trabecular degeneration has open new directions for treating glaucoma. The blockade of one receptor of CXCL12 has been experimentally shown not only to decrease intraocular pressure but also to prevent trabecular cell degeneration. This is an innovative concept that could allow development of new treatments, more specifically targeting the disease at its onset, rather than attempting to reduce its progression in its later stages.
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PMID:[Glaucoma today: detection and therapeutic progress]. 2410 39