ARVO 2024: Evaluating a lipid-containing eye drop for dry eye disease

Eric Donnenfeld, MD, a corneal, cataract and refractive surgeon at Ophthalmic Consultants of Connecticut, discussed his research with the Eye Care Network ahead of this year's Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) meeting. His presentations on the novel new artificial tear, Blink Triple Care, focus on its efficacy in a non-controlled trial, as well as comparison to the Classic Blink.

Editor's note - This transcript has been edited for clarity.

David Hutton: I'm David Hutton of Ophthalmology Times. The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology is holding its annual meeting in Seattle. At that meeting, Dr Eric Donnenfeld presented "Clinical evaluation of a novel lipid-containing eye drop." Thank you so much for joining us today. Tell us about your presentation.

Eric Donnenfeld, MD: Hi, I'm Eric Donnenfeld, and I'd like to tell you about two different presentations that we're doing here at ARVO. These involve a novel new artificial tear called Blink Triple Care. Blink Triple Care is the first and only artificial tear that contains not only polyethylene glycolate as a lubricant, but also contains hyaluronic acid and has a nanoemulsion of lipid. It's transiently preserved.

The first study just looked at the efficacy of this medication in a non-controlled trial, in which 77 subjects were enrolled, and of these, 75 completed the trial. We looked at baseline comfort and quality of vision, and we saw a statistically significant improvement in quality of vision at 7 days and again at 3 months later. Tear breakup time, from a breakup, was 8.8 seconds originally and 10.1 seconds on the third visit. The slit lamp findings showed a significant reduction in corneal staining.

We follow this up with a second trial in which we compared Blink Triple Care to the Classic Blink, which was the first hyaluronic acid-based tear used in the United States. What we found was a non-inferiority to Blink. What we looked at in this study was 158 participants enrolled, 130 completed the trial. We compared overall comfort scores from baseline to the 30-day follow-up. We show that this novel lipid-containing eye drop was similar to the Blink, but was actually better in this non-inferiority comparison, looking at ocular comfort. There were no significant adverse events in the trial, and basically, the take home message from these two different studies are that this novel, new Blink Triple Care, which combines hyaluronic acid with nanotechnology lipid, is a very effective therapy in the management of dry eye disease. Thank you very much.