Things that you should know about eye drops

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Dan Gudgel on June 1, 2023 at the American Academy of Ophthalmology simply titled Eye Drops. Also, there is another article by Kierstan Boyd on February 9, 2022 about Lubricating Eye Drops for Dry Eyes, and yet another on April 7, 2023 about Redness-Relieving Eye Drops.

 

More recently there is an article by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration on December 12, 2023 titled What You Should Know about Eye Drops. It followed another article on November 16, 2023 titled FDA warns consumers not to purchase or use certain eye drops from several major brands due to risk of eye infection. FDA’s consumer tips on December 12 include:

 

“Do not use ophthalmic products that:

 

Are marketed as OTC [over-the-counter] products to treat serious eye conditions such as  glaucoma, retinopathy, or macular degeneration. There are no OTC treatments for these conditions.

 

Are labeled as homeopathic, as these products should not be marketed.”

 

The tip about avoiding homeopathic eyedrops was picked up three other places: by Beth Mole at Ars Technica on December 12, 2023 in an article titled Every homeopathic eye drop should be pulled off the market, FDA says; by Laura Baisas at Popular Science on December 13, 2023 in another article titled Stop using homeopathic eye drops; and by Scott Gavura at Science-Based Medicine on December 21, 2023 in still another article titled FDA: Don’t use homeopathic eye drops.

 

Naturally there was grousing by Americans for Homeopathy Choice on December 26, 2023 in an article titled Our Homeopathic Eye Drops Are Gone! which lazily whined that FDA had not cited any adverse case reports. But there were at least two such case reports. One article by Lin Chen et al. at Clinical Medicine & Research for December 2017 is titled Anisocoria secondary to anticholinergic mydriasis from homeopathic pink eye relief drops. A second abstract by Mallorie L. Huff in the America Journal of Emergency Medicine for April 2022 is titled Acute angle closure glaucoma precipitated by homeopathic eyedrops containing Atropa belladonna.

 

The more common criticism of homeopathic products is that the active ingredient is so diluted as to be insignificant. An article by Steven Salzberg at Forbes on May 22, 2016 titled Allergy sufferers beware: These eye drops are a scam cautioned:

 

“Uh oh. It turns out that these products are little more than very, very expensive bottles of sterile water. For $9.99 you get 10 ml of water that contains several extracts–in vanishingly small amounts–for which there is no evidence whatsoever that they have any effect on allergies.”

 

An NIH image of eye drops came from Wikimedia Commons.