Alcon asked to cease certain Clear Care claims

The National Advertising Division has recommended that Alcon Laboratories discontinue several claims about Clear Care and Clear Care Plus, including one indicating that because the solutions are preservative-free, they are “more like natural tears.”

Alcon told Primary Care Optometry News that it will comply with the group’s recommendations.

The National Advertising Division (NAD) is an investigator unit of the advertising industry’s system of self-regulation that is administered by the Council of Better Business Bureaus.

The NAD said in a press release that Bausch + Lomb challenged a number of Alcon’s statements indicating that the hydrogen peroxide-based Clear Care solution provides better comfort, more hours of comfortable wear and cleaner feeling lenses than multipurpose solutions.

In addition, Bausch + Lomb protested Alcon’s claims that Clear Care’s HydraGlyde Moisture Matrix provides more comfort and long-lasting moisture.

NAD recommended that Alcon discontinue its claim that the absence of preservatives makes Clear Care and Clear Care Plus more like natural tears because Alcon could not support it, the group said in its press release. NAD also asked that Alcon discontinue or modify its unsupported claim that the bubbling action of hydrogen peroxide provides superior disinfection.

Alcon’s claims that Clear Care provides superior comfort, a cleaner feeling and less blurry vision than multipurpose solutions also should be discontinued, according to the NAD.

The NAD determined, however, that the claims that Clear Care Plus provides “long-lasting moisture” were supported.

In a statement provided to PCON, Alcon said it, “appreciates NAD’s recognition that hydrogen peroxide-based lens care solutions provide many benefits to contact-lens wearing consumers, especially those with sensitive eyes.”

The company said it is also pleased that the NAD recognized that its product comparison chart appropriately highlights differences between hydrogen peroxide and multipurpose solutions; that its hydrogen peroxide solutions clean and disinfect in a way that multipurpose solutions cannot; that Clear Care Plus provides added wettability and moisturizing benefits over the original Clear Care; and that the saline solution that remains after neutralization with a hydrogen peroxide solution is like one’s own tears in that it does not contain irritating preservatives.

However, Alcon told PCON that it is disappointed that the NAD, “did not recognize the widely accepted fact that, as a class, hydrogen peroxide solutions provide better disinfection than do multipurpose solutions and that NAD found that the 913 Study, as corroborated by the Lievens Study, did not support broad superior comfort claims versus multi-purpose solutions.” – by Nancy Hemphill, ELS, FAAO

References:

Alcon. Clear Care Plus vs. PeroxiClear. Posted April 9, 2015. Updated September 16, 2016. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/results/NCT02413333?term=NCT02413333&rank=1.

Lievens CW, et al. Optom Vis Sci. 2016;doi:10.1097/OPX.0000000000000890.