Therapeutics News

OSAKA, Japan — U.S. regulators have approved levofloxacin ophthalmic solution 1.5% (Iquix, Santen) for the treatment of both gram-positive and gram-negative bacterial corneal ulcers, said the manufacturer.

While povidone iodine has long been used by surgeons as a preoperative antiseptic, researchers have been looking at the agent for treating viral conjunctivitis as well as other ocular diseases.

Oral anti-infectives can be quite useful in treating external infections, particularly those affecting the eyelids. For these types of infections, oral agents expedite recovery and decrease the chance of relapse.

The class of systemic medications known as bisphosphonates is used to increase bone density in patients with osteoporosis, myeloma bone disease, Paget’s disease, metastatic cancer to bone, hypercalcemia of malignancy (also known as tumor-induced hypercalcemia) and total hip replacement or spinal cord injury (for the prevention and treatment of secondary heterotopic ossification).

The area of ocular anti-infective treatment continues to advance, with many of the major pharmaceutical companies currently developing new drugs or combinations. The recent Food and Drug Administration approvals of Zymar (gatifloxacin ophthalmic solution 0.3%) from Allergan and Vigamox (moxifloxacin ophthalmic solution 0.5%) from Alcon were a large part of these advances.

Adopt simple routines to reduce the likelihood of a medication error:

Higher concentrations and increased solubilities in next-generation fluoroquinolones are expected to provide even more potent treatment against ocular pathogens.

The advent of next-generation fluoroquinolones promises to make treatment for ocular infections more effective than ever. Significantly greater gram-positive coverage has the potential to further subdue organisms such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and resistant Streptococcus.

Lee S. Peplinski, OD, FAAO: Drug samples are vitally important when starting any new chronic therapy. Conditions such as glaucoma, allergic eye disease, dry eyes and the like all lend themselves well to samples when a new drug is prescribed.

J. James Thimons, OD: The breadth of pharmaceutical use in optometry has increased exponentially in the past decade. With that, applying therapeutic agents outside of their Food and Drug Administration-approved status has become a routine part of the daily care of our patients. Interestingly, a significant percentage of many drugs’ current uses have never received formal approval. Rather, they have been adopted into clinical practice as a result of refereed literature documenting the substantial amount of work in this area.