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Soothe XP returns to the market
How about some plain old, good news? Soothe XP is back on the market for our patients with dry eye syndrome.
This is great news for everyone, and even though it has been frustrating waiting for Bausch + Lomb to make it happen, we all owe them a “high-five” and thanks for getting it back onto pharmacy shelves.
No matter how you break it down, there are two distinct categories of dry eye: aqueous deficient (not enough tears produced) and evaporative (poor tear function). Evidence during the last decade points toward an inflammatory negative-feedback loop as the common causal element for both.
Evaporative dry eye syndrome becomes symptomatic when the lipid element of the tears fails to maintain a smooth outer surface of the tear film. This, in turn, leads to tears that begin to break up prior to the next blink. Near-vision activities such as reading or computer use reduce the basal blink rate and tend to make the dysfunctional tear syndrome or evaporative dry eye more symptomatic.
The active ingredients in Soothe XP are light mineral oil and mineral oil. Doctors of “a certain age” will recall the days of using mineral oil to “MacGyver” compounded eye drops for severe surface disease (ask Mark Milner, MD, for some stories!)
The Soothe XP theory is pretty straightforward: supplement the ineffective lipid layer. Countless patients have benefitted.
Bausch + Lomb was kind of quiet when it reintroduced Soothe XP to the market, so I thought I’d be a “good do-be” and remind you that it’s around again.