Alison Ng is a clinical scientist at the Centre for Ocular Research & Education, in the School of Optometry & Vision Science at the University of Waterloo.
Download the poster (.pdf) originally shared at the American Optometric Association Annual meeting in 2022.
Examining symptomatic relief and kinetic tear film stability of I-DROP MGD eye drops
Alison Ng, Jaya Dantam, Jill Woods, Blair McEwen, Lyndon Jones
Background: I-DROP MGD is a novel formulation of viscoadaptive hyaluronan, phosphorylcholine and glycerin to support integration, stabilization and enhancement of the tear film lipid layer as well as hydration of the ocular surface. The purpose of this study was to compare the difference in tear film measures after instilling I‑DROP MGD (test) compared with another hyaluronic acid-based lubricant, Thealoz Duo (control), and to examine the subjective relief of dry eye symptoms with I-DROP MGD over 1-week.
Method: This prospective pilot study (n=10) comprised of two parts. Part 1 was a non-dispensing, double-masked study involving contralateral application of test and control drops, followed by a two-hour observation period. Non-invasive tear break-up time (NITBUT), tear meniscus height (TMH) and lipid layer thickness (LLT) were measured out to 2 hours. Part 2 was a dispensing study, where one bottle of I‑DROP MGD was provided to participants to use bilaterally at least once daily for 7 days. After 7 days, subjective ratings (0-100 scale) of comfort, soothing and quality of vision along with OSDI and SPEED scores were collected and compared with participant’s habitual eye drops.
Results: Part 1: NITBUT and TMH were significantly greater with I-DROP MGD (14.2 ± 5.1s and 0.42 ± 0.22mm) compared to Thealoz Duo (10.5 ± 5.7s and 0.29 ± 0.10mm) after 60‑minutes (pNITBUT=0.037) and 5-minutes of instillation (pTMH=0.022) respectively; LLT was significantly thicker with Thealoz Duo (79.5 ± 15.7nm) compared to I-DROP MGD (68.5 ± 13.8nm) after 5‑minutes of instillation (p=0.005). Part 2: Subjective ratings for comfort and soothing were significantly greater with I-DROP MGD (81.6 ± 5.7 and 86.8 ± 8.1) compared to habitual eye drops (73.3 ± 13.7 and 75.3 ± 19.8), p=0.027 and p=0.010 respectively. No significant differences were observed for quality of vision. OSDI and SPEED scores were significantly lower following use of I‑DROP MGD (33.2 ± 11.7 and 11.1 ± 3.6) when compared to habitual drops (45.2 ± 14.7 and 14.9 ± 2.7), p=0.017 and p=0.006 respectively.
Conclusion: When used for 7 days, I-DROP MGD resulted in clinically relevant reductions in dry eye symptoms, measured with OSDI.
