Blood serum eye drops let patients heal themselves

“We were looking at possibly a cornea transplant, among several other things,” Kellough said. “I had burnt all the layers off of my cornea.”

But Kellough, like several other local patients suffering from eye ailments, held the key for a different treatment option – in his own blood.

St. John’s Clinic Eye Specialists is using autologous serum eye drops to treat patients with a variety of eye ailments that injure the eye surface. Autologous serum eye drops differ from traditional drops in that they are created using the patient’s own blood serum.

Kellough has been taking eight drops a day to treat his injury.

Tauber, director of ophthalmology research with St. John’s, began working to get the health system to offer autologous eye drops when he came to Springfield in 2004.

Tauber had researched the drops at Yale University, where he previously worked and knew that the drops supported the healing of the epithelium, the protective barrier of the eye. Autologous serum drops were first made available through St. John’s in 2005.

“The patient’s own serum is used to heal the surface of the eye. (It is for) those who have had a chemical injury or for patients with chronic eye diseases like rheumatoid arthritis or where there is an open sore that cannot heal,” Tauber said. “It tends to be very painful, and it also makes the patient more susceptible to chronic infection of the eye, which risks the structure of the eye, not just the sight.”

Ida Davis, another of Tauber’s autologous serum patients, suffers from a chronic eye infection. It cost Davis her sight in one eye. She said the drops have given her some much-needed relief.

“I’ve had wonderful results,” she said, adding that she’s used the drops for more than a year. “My eye was going from bad to worse, and we weren’t making any progress. Then, Dr. Tauber told me about the drops, and they have been wonderful for my eye.”

Tauber said the drops are not the first line of treatment for patients; most are first given more common types of drops, ranging from common over-the-counter artificial tears to steroid drops to Restasis, a recently approved prescription that encourages natural tear production.

But for patients who don’t find relief from those treatments, Tauber said the serum drops have proven more successful.

“We haven’t isolated what it is in the serum that is helpful – if it were just insulin, for example, or a specific protein, we could give insulin drops or protein drops,” Tauber said, adding that there are anywhere from 40 to 50 patients using the drops at any one time. “But those individual items by themselves don’t work as well, so it must be the combination that works. It’s not foolproof, but we have had excellent results with patients that have failed all other treatments.”

Drop drawbacks

There are some downsides to the serum drops, not the least of which is price, Tauber said.

While a bottle of traditional synthetic eye drops costs about $10 for a one-month supply, the autologous serum costs $150 per month to manufacture because of the time and equipment involved. If a patient is uninsured, they will also have to pay the cost of a lab test to make sure the drops are free of bacteria; that test can cost anywhere from $400 to $600.

An added drawback, Tauber said, is that most insurance companies will not cover the cost of the drops themselves, though they usually cover the cost of lab tests.

“What I’m having problems with is that my staff is spending an inordinate amount of time dealing with angry patients because they think it’s our fault that they’re not getting this medicine,” Tauber said, noting that the health center charges patients only the cost of making the drops. “I think eventually we should be able to get the insurance companies to realize that this is worth getting done for our patients.”

While Kellough has not had financial trouble with the drops – his treatment is covered by worker’s compensation insurance – the cost would be worth it.

Kellough, who thought he might need a cornea transplant, went back to work Jan. 2.

“My vision now with my glasses is 20/20 – it’s pretty much back to normal,” he said. “I don’t even know how to begin to tell you how much they’ve helped. We wouldn’t be this far along if we hadn’t used the eye drops.”

Other drawbacks include the necessity of refrigerating the autologous drops, because unlike artificial drops, they don’t contain preservatives.

The drops are also more susceptible to contamination; if the eyedropper even touches the patient’s eyelid, the drops should be replaced.

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