Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Corporate news: B&L to acquire Soothe

Bausch & Lomb Acquires Soothe® Emollient (Lubricant) Eye Drops from Alimera Sciences; Expands Product Line

In a nutshell... Bausch & Lomb acquired Soothe, renamed it Soothe XP and are building more of a brand around it with a polymer based lubricant eyedrop.

Nothing against Alimera (I like their people and I admire their success) but... I hope B&L ditches the orange and purple packaging.

This leaves Alimera to focus solely on therapeutic ophthalmics.

Monday, July 30, 2007

New drugs update (sort of): Inspire lawsuit dismissed

I was pleased to note in the news the other day that a class-action lawsuit against Inspire after its poor Phase III clinical results were announced has been dismissed. Back to business and I hope there is still life in diquafosol!!

Class action suit against Inspire is dismissed
(July 27)

Newsclips: Miscellaneous recent general press articles

I like to post things like this just as an encouragement that dry eye awareness in the press is increasing.... Much of this thanks to Dr. Latkany's book!!

Dry Eye? Treatment can bring tears of relief

(July 29, Barre Montpelier Times Argus)

Latkany claims that dry eye is the No. 1 reason patients see eye doctors.

"Inflammation is probably the greatest reason people have it, and inflammation can be associated with an autoimmune condition such as Sjogren's syndrome, or rheumatoid arthritis, or lupus."

But dry eye can also be caused by surgery on eyelids, watching a lot of television, staring all day at a computer, having a change of hormones with menopause, antidepressants, allergies or wearing contact lenses. The list goes on.

"Very rarely, it's one thing," he says. "Several things may play a role."

His book calls the condition a "stealth disorder" that can be a "thief of sight" because the instability the disorder causes to the eye's tear film impairs quality of vision bit by bit that can erode a person's ability to read, drive at night or even use the phone or an ATM machine.


Also, there is a brief blurb in August's Reader's Digest about dry eye and about "The Dry Eye Remedy". I hope that RD can be persuaded to give fuller coverage to this issue in time. Hint, hint: Try and make time to write to them and let them know we want them to write about dry eye!