What’s new in dry eye therapeutics
Erin Rueff, OD, PhD, of the Southern California College of Optometry, spoke with Optometry 360 about her recent presentation at the American Academy of Optometry 2025 Annual Meeting. The talk focused on the recently approved treatments for dry eye disease and how to select the best option for patients.
Erin Rueff, OD, PhD:
Hi, I am Erin Rueff. I am chief of the cornea contact lens service at the Southern California College of Optometry. I teach there and see patients and do all things contact lens and ocular surface disease.
My second talk, myself and my colleague, Dr. Elaine Chen, did a update in dry eye therapeutics. We see dry eye patients every day in our clinic, and we think and talk about dry eye all the time. I find it’s even hard for me to stay up to date and kind of on top of all of the new treatment options that are coming out. The goal of this lecture was to kind of review the newer treatment options that have either come onto the market or become more heavily used in the last 3 or 4 years.
We started off by talking about the DEWS III report, which came out earlier this summer, and kind of highlighting what’s new in definitions and diagnostic strategies with the DEWS III report. Then we went into talking about new things in the meibomian gland treatment category. We really focused on new topical therapeutics that have come out specific for meibomian gland disease and also in-office treatments like IPL and radiofrequency, which are doing a really great job of actually treating the disease process in our patients with meibomian gland disease. Then we also talked about new therapeutics and pharmaceuticals on the market that have been targeted specifically for aqueous deficient and inflammatory dry eye. These are patients who tend to be more challenging to have successful treatments in because they either have a systemic condition that’s contributing to their signs or symptoms or a systemic medication or a combination of all of those things.
In the last 3 or 4 years, there’s been a lot of new, exciting topical pharmaceuticals that have come on the market that do more than just lubricate the surface. Steroidal type drops, non-steroidal type options, and even some new medications that are actually targeting nerve function and kind of how our corneal nerves are signaling to our brain that our eyes are dry or not. That’s really exciting for those patients. That’s what we covered in the dry eye talk, and hopefully that gave everyone a better internal organization of how to choose treatments for those dry eye patients.
