More on Vital Tears

  Autologous serum tears are a very underutilized dry eye treatment which may have very successful results. This article goes into depth but here are the highlights:

• Autologous serum is a blood-derived eye drop that can be used to treat a variety of ocular surface diseases.
• The mechanism of action of autologous serum drops is to mimic the biochemical properties of natural basal tears in order to heal the ocular surface epithelium.
• Barriers to using autologous serum include cost and chair time, but patients tend to have better and quicker improvement compared with use of traditional dry eye drops.
• When clinicians do recommend autologous serum tears to patients, they are typically implemented only as an end-stage therapy, when patients could have benefitted from using them much earlier. 

 Reflex tears are the tears we experience when we cry. 

 Basal tears are continuously produced to provide lubrication to the ocular surface. 

 Both types of natural tears consist of lots of stuff (water, mucin, lipids, proteins (lysozyme, lactoferrin, lipocalin, immunoglobulins, and peroxidase), electrolytes (sodium, potassium, chloride, bicarbonate, magnesium, and calcium), growth factors (epidermal growth factor), cytokines, and glucose).

 The serum is created by extracting blood from the patient, clotting, centrifuging, and diluting with sterile saline, and is then stored in the freezer. These drops should be stored in the freezer until use, and then stored in the refrigerator once opened.

 This makes for one cold eye drop! 

The mechanism of action of autologous serum eye drops is to mimic the biochemical properties of natural basal tears in order to heal the ocular surface epithelium. Which is just truly fascinating.

 My eyes are no worse but not exponentially better... yet. I believe in these tears and hope for good things soon. 

 Just like your tear layers: