Dry Eye Syndrome manifests as burning, stinging, tenderness and blurred vision along with pain and the sensation of something in your eye. The commonly prescribed medicine to combat this situation, Restasis, often requires months to relieve symptoms. In early studies Restasis drops and its non-medicated vehicle marketed separately as Refresh Endura seemed equally effective although the annual price for Restasis approaches $5000. Uncomfortable adverse reactions routinely prompt many to opt in favor of the newly available competitor Xiidra.
Hello i’m dr. ken landau thanks for watching let’s talk about wrist asus wrist asus you see advertised so heavily on the television these days it’s for the dry eye syndrome but actually it’s approved only to increase the tear production it contains a topical immunomodulators it reduces the immune reaction on the surface of the eye by a medicine known as cyclosporine
The drug is easy to apply it’s a white emulsion you turn the vial upside down a couple of times in order to get a uniform spread of the medicine then you put one drop in each eye twice a day make sure you don’t touch the vial to the eye itself and you keep your lids closed for a few moments afterward if you have dry eye syndrome you probably shouldn’t be wearing
The contact lenses but a lot of people do and if you wear contact lenses you should keep them out for about 15 minutes after you put the drops in we know that the drops take forever to start to work it’s thought that you can need anywhere between six weeks and six months for them to become effective and then when you put the drops in the drops cause a lot of
Side effects side effects like burning and stinging and itching and redness and the feeling like you have a foreign object in your eye and it can cause very vision for about 15 minutes and then some people eye pain and allergic reactions and it doesn’t seem to work if you use certain other kind of eye medicines well we know that since it takes so long to work
Some people recommend that you use a topical corticosteroid for quick relief and the drops seem to decrease the burning and decrease some of the other kind of symptoms that you get with wrist aces but remember if we talk about a three-fold increase in tear production we’re only talking about 15% of the people 85% of the people don’t get that much improvement
Is it going to eliminate the need for artificial tears no it really isn’t might make you need only five drops a day or ten drops a day but the overlying majority of people seem to require some sort of additional lubricant in order to ease the everyday discomfort well side effects are using the medicine as i told you 15 to 20 percent of the people going to have
Some i burning or i pain itching stinging redness discharge tears running down your cheek that aren’t the tears that you want to be produced the foreign object sensation blurring of the vision so i defect from injuring yourself because you touch the container to your eyeball and the hypersensitivity reaction the hives the angioedema if you take the medicine
Orally as was done in laboratory animals and relatively high doses it is known to cause certain kind of cancer as pancreatic cancer liver cancer cancer of the blood organs lymphoma but when it’s used topically in the eye you don’t get any absorption it appears so those things should not occur the medicine contains a vehicle the vehicle is marketed as refresh and
Aura that’s used as a lubricant and as a matter of fact early studies didn’t show any difference between using the refresh and aura and using the wrist asis the only difference is the refresh enduro was not nearly as expensive if it seems that you’ve used the medicine for about half a year to a year and it doesn’t seem to work well then you probably ought to
Discontinue it now there are a lot of ads that are touting another kind of a drug a drug for dry eye syndrome that treats the symptoms and this is known as i i drew and the growth of sales of wrist aces since this medicine just recently became available have fallen by about 40 percent so it looks like it looks like wrist aces is going to be in for a run for its
Money now run for your life it seems it’s a topical immunomodulators it’s for the dry eye syndrome also called the keratoconjunctivitis sicca zeroth almia ocular surface disorder dysfunctional tears syndrome the symptoms are pretty much the same kind of symptoms as you get from using the drugs burning scratching sensation sensitivity to light your eyes are red
You feel like you have a foreign object in your eyes difficulty wearing contact lenses your eyes seem to get tired or fatigued very common syndrome seems somewhere between 5% and maybe more than 30% of the population suffers from dry eye syndrome is estimated that if we look at the senior citizens by themselves of people over age 65 maybe about 5 million people
Have the condition now not all of them suffer from the symptoms symptoms seem to be worsened in the winter time when there’s a relative reduction in humidity desert climate or if there’s increased temperature more evaporation it’s common with contact lenses certain drugs after you’ve had your refractive surgery so you don’t need your eyeglasses and it seems to
Come on very frequently in menopausal women lots of other kind of medicines available some people use the omega-3 fatty acids that you take by mouth some people put topical compresses or lid massages or tear plugs or artificial tears and now we have zion dru it’s thought that the condition for the most part may be an autoimmune disease where some inflammatory
Cells are interacting with the cells on the surface of the eye to irritate it well we know the tears are very complicated tears contain some protein and immunoglobulins and lysozymes and lactoferrin they also contain antibacterial substances and salt water has several different layers an inner layer of mucin that helps the tears spread the major layer of aqueous
Solution that’s basically salt water and then we have the outermost layer that’s mostly fat that’s from the my bohmian glands well you can have an increased loss of your tears because central air conditioning or dry putting the the heater on maybe because there’s pollution or maybe because of wind or maybe because you’re watching the television and you’re not
Blinking or maybe because you’re staring at the computer and again not blinking or maybe because you have blepharitis or maybe have rosacea that can interfere with the fact production well wrist asus says that they’re not afraid of the competition from ziya drew but in spite of that they’ve added a lot of sales representatives they’ve increased the budget for
Advertising on the television that’s why you’re bombarded with ads all the time they have more samples that therefore they’re offering to the doctors there is increased insurance coverage analyst suggests that that maybe there’s going to be about a 30% reduction in the volume prescriptions for this compound that wrist aces but they say that the wrist aces folks
Are probably going to jack up the price it’s already expensive by maybe about ten or fifteen percent it’s under patent till about 2024 so there are no generics but it can be compounded in pharmacy now at the end of october of 2016 instead of having just the individual dose packs the company got approval for a big bottle a bottle that you could use for all month
It’s said to be relatively more convenient i’m not sure about that so what’s the summary on the drug well summary is that we have a drug that causes irritation in about 17% of the people causes benefit in about 15% of the people by substantial a little tear production it seems that a month supply of the drug if you pay cash for it is more than $500 and if you
Have a coupon on good rx it’s about the same so in other words it costs $5,000 or more for use of wrist aces that doesn’t work very well in the majority of people so what’s my taker what’s my rating on the drug the cost is absolutely ridiculous and the effectiveness it’s just so so anyway thanks for watching i’m dr. ken landau you
Transcribed from video
Restasis By wellnowdoctor