This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Hypochlorous acid reduces fungal infection rate in patients with Boston K-Pro
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
BARCELONA — The rates of fungal infection are low but not insignificant in patients with a Boston keratoprosthesis, according to a speaker.
In a retrospective study of 15 case reports of fungal keratitis or endophthalmitis in Boston K-Pro patients between 2001 and 2015, Silvia Odorcic, MD, FRCSC, and colleagues found the rate of fungal infection to range from 0.009 to 0.02 per patient-year of follow-up.
Silvia Odorcic
“Patients who have K-Pros unfortunately require lifelong prophylactic antibiotics, and while this has reduced the incidence of bacterial endophthalmitis, it has increased the rates of fungal infection and colonization,” she said at the International Conference on Ocular Infections, held jointly with the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons meeting.
Current regimens with amphotericin B or natamycin require pulsed doses periodically, and the drugs can be expensive, are not widely available in some areas and may be toxic to the ocular surface.
“There’s an extremely pressing need for a standardized antifungal prophylaxis regimen,” she said.
One agent under study to prevent fungal infection in Boston K-Pro eyes is 0.01% hypochlorous acid, whose in vitro antifungal activity achieved a kill rate of 99.99% or better for all mold and yeast species tested after exposure to the agent for 1 minute, Odorcic said. The in vitro antifungal time-kill assays were undertaken at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.
“When you look at our results, you can see that hypochlorous acid was extremely effective for all of the mold and all of the yeast species tested,” she said.
The agent, currently sold as Avenova (NovaBay Pharmaceuticals), is considered a broad-spectrum antimicrobial and is FDA cleared as an adjunctive treatment for blepharitis, Odorcic said. – by Patricia Nale, ELS
Disclosure: Odorcic reports she was a full time employee of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, which is the manufacturer of the Boston keratoprosthesis, at the time of writing for the study.