Publication Exclusive: Xiidra takes the stage: Keenly anticipated medicine available to treat dry eye disease

Well, Labor Day has come and gone, so I guess it is time for my annual September lifitegrast — now Xiidra — column. After what seemed like forever, the FDA approved Xiidra in July for the treatment of both the signs and symptoms of DED. I have had the opportunity to use it for about 6 weeks. Why don’t we take a little bit of time and review what it is, how it works and how you can integrate it into your DED protocols in the near term.

In the DED community of physicians, it is now axiomatic that DED is a progressive inflammatory disease. Depending on what is primarily affected, the inflammation causes a decrease in either tear quantity or tear quality, or both. The societal impact of DED is great, and it is growing. Conservative estimates are that there are 25 million sufferers, but if you accept that DED is the second most common cause of blurred vision (after ametropia), the number is likely closer to 50 million or 60 million in the United States alone. Computer and cell phone use, along with decades of industrial food production, can only be expected to increase these numbers.

All about Xiidra

Xiidra is a first-in-class LFA inhibitor that acts to prevent both the activation of lymphocytes as well as the recruitment of those activated lymphocytes to the ocular surface. While it reduced the signs of DED in the studies designed to primarily examine that, the most notable thing I took from the cumulative research submitted to the FDA was that the symptoms of DED were decreased in pretty much all of the studies. Remember, I am the DED symptom guy; I have been pounding the importance of driving your DED treatment protocol according to your patient’s symptoms for years. It is an equally big deal that the FDA considered symptoms at all, frankly.

• Click here to read the full publication exclusive, The Dry Eye, published in Ocular Surgery News U.S. Edition, September 25, 2016.