Fluoroquinolones penetrated cornea when delivered via collagen shields

Collagen shields soaked in fourth-generation fluoroquinolones effectively delivered the antibiotics into the anterior chambers of rabbit eyes, an experimental study found.

Guy Kleinmann, MD, and colleagues at the John A. Moran Eye Center in Salt Lake City soaked the collagen shields for 10 minutes in commercially available solutions of gatifloxacin or Vigamox (moxifloxacin 0.5%, Alcon). They then placed the shields onto the corneas of 24 rabbits evenly divided between the two drugs.

After 3 hours, aqueous humor samples showed high concentrations of antibiotics: 3.1 µg/mL for Vigamox and 2.3 µg/mL for gatifloxacin. At 6 hours, gatifloxacin concentrations averaged 0.76 µg/mL and were significantly higher than the Vigamox concentration of 0.29 µg/mL (P = .03), according to the study authors.

"Our results suggest that collagen shields can be effective as a drug delivery systems for the fourth-generation fluoroquinolones with a longer effect for gatifloxacin," the authors said.

The study is published in the January issue of Ophthalmologica.