Targeting Myopia through Next Gen Contact Lenses

New age contact lenses to bring respite to the people suffering from myopia

Millions of people are suffering from variety of eye disease one such popular eye deteriorating condition is myopia. But a team of researchers from Brisbane has successful developed the next gen contact lenses which can help in changing the loss of eye sight in the long run. This new contact lens has been developed with the partnership between the world’s largest contact lens manufacturer Johnson & Johnson Vision and Queensland University of Technology’s professor Michael Collins. This helped in boosting the research being conducted by the professor into myopia and helps in enhancing the contact lens design to the next level.

A collaboration to last for two decades

This enhanced contact lens is a result of the 20 year collaboration between these two in which 12 years will be given towards supporting the university’s research program for the global myopia epidemic. Professor Collins has stated that this collaboration will help them in understanding the development as well as the progression of myopia. It is worth noting that there are more than two billion are suffering from myopia globally and it affects almost 4 million people in Australia.

Currently the team of researchers are working towards finding better strategies to slow and stop this disease before finding a perfect way to prevent it. In upcoming next few years they will be focusing on developing new optical designs specifically for the next gen contact lenses which has the potential to slow down the eye growth.

What is myopia and how it affects you?

Myopia or nearsightedness is one of the most common ‘refractive error’ for the eye. It is caused by the eyes growing too long eventually resulting in reproduction of blurred images. In this condition people have difficulty reading and seeing distant objects clearly but they are able to see the close up things well enough without any issues.

People suffering myopia will have huge difficulty in reading signs too far away like billboards, road signs but reading books will be a simple task for them and in some cases using computer wouldn’t require spectacles.

Saving the human eyes with next gen contact lens

Professor Collins has asserted that his research isn’t just focused towards reducing and preventing the rise of myopia but towards helping people in seeing better and clearer than ever before. It should be noted that the people suffering from myopia area more likely to develop other eye problems as they get older. They are at the risk of contracting eyes problems like retinal degenerations which can eventually lead to the partial blindness.

Therefore it becomes vital to slow down the myopia progression right at the younger age. He even states that the two main causes of the myopia are genetic risk and environmental causes. People who happen to do a lot of near work like reading, spending time indoors, or looking at the computer screens longer duration are likely to develop myopia.

This next gen contact lens will help the people suffering from myopia to start their way on the road to slow progression rather than sharing the risk of partial blindness in later years.