Tear Study May Help Contact Lens Wearers

"When contact lenses work best, wearers forget forget they are on their eyes. But after too many hours of wear, the lenses and the wearer's eyes dry out, causing irritation that might outweigh the convenience of contacts. Now researchers hope to alleviate that pain by both advancing the understanding of how natural tears keep our eyes comfortable, and developing a machine for designing better contact lenses," according to a post on Western Daily Press. "The work was inspired in part by a scientist's own dry eyes. Doctor Saad Bhamla, of Stanford University in the US, said: 'As a student, I had to stop wearing lenses due to the increased discomfort. Focusing my PhD thesis to understand this problem was both a personal and professional goal.' The researchers suspected that most of the discomfort arises from the break up of the tear film, a wet coating on the surface of the eye, during a process called dewetting." Read more.