Submitted by administrator on
With a certain amount of concern attached to the continued use of the drug atropine in treating myopia, researchers and scientists have been hunting down alternative avenues and options regarding the treatment of this eye condition. It has therefore come as quite a boost that in recent tests, much lower percentage doses of the drug have shown comparable improvements or slowing. As it currently stands, there are worries about the long term use of the drug atropine with links to allergies and the effect it has on the patients pupil.
Myopia, the partly hereditary disease, is a "refractive defect of the eye in which collimated light produces image focus in front of the retina under conditions of accommodation." Simply put, this condition causes light entering the eye to incorrectly focus on the retina. From this, the sufferers vision is affected when viewing things at a distance, with the image appearing out of focus, yet objects close to the eye appear in focus correctly.
The research project focused around the effects that a much smaller dose of atropine, 1/100th of the current standard dose, had on myopic progression in children between the ages of 6 and 12 years of age. Following a two year period, results favourably showed that the standard 1% dose had a myopic progression in the subjects of -0.3DS as opposed to a -0.49DS in the patients who received the much smaller dose. Although the project is still in a testing phase, the hope is that this much safer dosage will provide alternative options in treating the condition in future.