Evolution and outlook of dry eye pharmatheutical research

ABSTRACT

Dry eye is a common, highly prevalent and multifactorial ocular disease.Severe dry eye not only has a serious impact on the patient's work performance and quality of life, but also increases the risk of other ocular disease complications.Due to its complex pathogenesis and prolonged treatment cycle, dry eye has become an important social and public health problem.Traditional dry eye drugs can usually alleviate, but not completely eliminate, the symptoms of dry eye, and are far from meeting current clinical demands.Newly marketed domestic and foreign anti-inflammatory drugs that inhibit T cell function as well as drugs that promote tear secretion represent, to some extent, the rapid progress of dry eye drug research.Even so, the overall state of clinical dry eye management has not been significantly improved.Dry eye treatment still faces great challenges; a huge gap exists between clinical needs and the development of new drugs.Insightful research on the pathogenesis of dry eye is the basis for identifying new pharmatheutical targets.Progress in the research and development of dry eye drugs brings about new options for treatment strategies.Ophthalmologists should keep updated to the research progress in dry eye and to the mechanism of actions of new drugs in order to better serve dry eye patients.