Twelve-year-old Isabella Jorgenson loves to be in front of the lens, but being nearsighted turned her early modeling career into a blur. "That tree, that grass, the plants it all blends in to make one big thing." She tried contacts, but the maintenance was too much for the preteen to handle. That's when her mom heard about a study testing contacts worn only at night. "We're looking to see if we can stop the progression, and I said, that's what we want!"
Kids wear the cornea-reshaping contacts while they sleep. Optometrists say when they take them out in the morning, their vision is temporarily corrected. Regular contacts are curved. These look like a plateau. "It's flat in the center and steeper on the sides."
It gently flattens the center of the eye during the night, changing the shape of the cornea. Before wearing the contacts, a nearsighted eye is steep, highlighted in red. After the contacts have been worn, the eye flattens out, shown in green. "Very similar to if you've ever worn a watch or a ring, and you take the ring or the watch off, there's a little indentation."
In a study of 300 kids, those with the re-shaping lenses maintained their vision after the first year. Those with regular contacts needed a stronger prescription. "I'm really not talking about permanent correcting, but what I am talking about is reducing the progression."
For Isabella, it means 20/20 vision during the day without contacts or glasses. "I can see!" Letting her eyes do the work at night … so she can focus on the road ahead.
The cornea-reshaping lenses are already FDA approved for adults. Now doctors are collecting data to find out if they can stop the progression of nearsightedness in kids. Some people wear the contacts every night. Others with better vision can wear them every other night and still see fine during the day. They carry the same risks as regular contact lenses, which are infection and eye irritation.
BACKGROUND: Nearsightedness or myopia is a common vision condition in which you can see objects close to you clearly, but objects farther away appear blurry. The degree of nearsightedness determines your focusing ability. People with severe nearsightedness can see clearly only objects just a few inches away, while those with mild myopia may be able to see several yards away. Nearsightedness often starts during childhood and grows worse through adolescence. It tends to run in families and is easily corrected with glasses, contacts or surgery.
About 25 percent of the U.S. population has myopia, while the incidence of nearsightedness approaches 70 percent in some Asian countries. High levels of myopia are associated with a number of risk factors for permanent vision loss and also effects vision performance that can impact a child's academic performance.
A NIGHTTIME TREATMENT: Researchers are testing whether specialized contact lenses can slow or halt the progression of nearsightedness in children. Overnight corneal reshaping is a non-surgical process that uses specially designed contact lenses to change the shape of the cornea. Lenses are worn overnight during sleep only. Once removed upon waking, the induced flatter curvature of the cornea results in clear vision, reducing or eliminating the need for contacts or glasses during the day.
A year ago, U.S. investigators started a study in nearsighted children and teens to test whether the overnight contacts not only improved vision during the day, but slowed the progression of nearsightedness. Dubbed the SMART study, half of the participants were fitted with the corneal reshaping lenses; the control group subjects were fitted with normal soft contact lenses worn on a daily basis. Researchers will follow the subjects for five years. However, first-year data showed that the corneal reshaping lenses did control nearsightedness progression in comparison to the control soft lens subjects, who became significantly more nearsighted than the test corneal reshaping lens subjects.
"The shape of a normal contact lens is very curved," Rob Davis, O.D., an optometrist at Davis Eye Care in Oaklawn, Ill., told Ivanhoe. "The shape of these corneal reshaping lenses look more like a plateau. It's flat in the center and then steeper on the sides, and so when we're changing the shape of the eye, what it does is it generally flattens the center of the eye in relation to the periphery. This is what reduces the curvatures of the eye, and hence reduces the myopia."
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Davis Eye Care
(708) 636-0600
