Could a Contact Lens Save Your Vision?

July 21, 2008 -- Soon contact lenses won't just correct eyesight; they could save your vision.

By applying electrically conductive, antibiotic nanosilver particles to contact lenses, researchers at the University of California, Davis, can continuously map the pressure inside a human eye while administering medication directly and painlessly into it.

The new lenses promise to advance understanding of diseases like glaucoma, the second leading cause of blindness worldwide, and could save the eyesight of millions, say the researchers.

"It would be really helpful to measure the pressure inside the eye continuously," said Tingrui Pan, a professor at the University of California, Davis, and co-author of a paper describing the lenses in Advanced Functional Materials.

Pressure inside the eye, the leading indication of glaucoma, can vary widely from day to day, even minute to minute. Currently, doctors only measure pressure every few months (depending on the patient), said James Brandt, a physician at UC Davis who is involved in the research.

"Compare that to another chronic disease like diabetes, where we can have blood sugar measurements several times a day," he added.

Right now the contact lenses, made from polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), are a close cousin to modern-day contact lenses. They have an eight-by-eight grid nanosilver lines that provide 64 pressure points. Each point independently monitors eye pressure and relays information to a computer that records the pressure inside the eye.