•Notícia

Pauné's doctoral thesis, supervised by the professors of the UPC's Terrassa School of Optics and Optometry (FOOT) Jesus Armengol and Lluïsa Quevedo, has led to the design, patenting, manufacture and clinical validation of a new contact lens that reduces the progression of myopia by 43%. According to Pauné, "there is no other progressive contact lens commercialised in the world with this effectiveness, so I think it will have a great immediate impact, especially in the younger population. Myopia appears at an average age of 9 and it is estimated that approximately 25% of 13-year-olds and 45% of university students are myopic", explains Pauné.

Pauné's innovative contact lens controls peripheral defocusing to slow the progression of myopia in children and young people. This new design is based on a continuous modification of the refractive power and differs significantly from other designs that are currently in use. According to Pauné, "my design is based on studies showing that a person may see well at a distance, i.e. forward in a straight line, but their lateral vision is blurred. This effect causes myopia to progress. Therefore, the contact lens I have developed is radically different from the conventional ones that try to correct myopia by modifying the centre of the retina. The ones I have created modify the image in the centre and at the sides, covering the whole area of the retina. In fact, animal experiments confirm that the image formed on the periphery of the retina is essential for controlling myopia".

Pauné uses hydrophilic and gas-permeable materials to make the lenses. The performance of the new lens has been extensively validated in five clinical studies published in four indexed journals and has been patented in Spain.

The effectiveness of the hydrophilic lens was tested on a hundred patients, who used them for two years. The results showed a reduction of up to 43% in the progression of myopia. The clinical studies were performed at the surgeries of Dr Fernández-Agrafojo and Jaume Pauné (Marsden Centre), located at the Teknon Medical Centre; the FOOT, the Centre for Sensors, Instruments and Systems Development (CD6) and the University Vision Centre (CUV), all belonging to the UPC; and the Universidade do Minho, Portugal.

Myopia is the main defect of vision in the world, the fifth cause of blindness and one of the main risk factors of most serious eye diseases directly associated with the number of dioptres.

According to a study recently published in the scientific journal Nature, the incidence of myopia in the population is increasing. For example, in some Asian countries it affects up to 80% of the active student population, causing serious health problems and related socioeconomic problems, and requiring health care and optical correction equipment.

Jaume Pauné (Barcelona, 1964) graduated in 1991 from the FOOT with the highest marks in his year. Later, he took a master's degree in Optometry and Vision Sciences at the FOOT; his master's thesis led to the creation of a new contact lens that corrects long-sightedness during sleep. In 1992 he was awarded a prize by the National College of Opticians-Optometrists for his work on contact lenses for controlling myopia, and in 2010 he was awarded the same prize for his work on developing the orthokeratology lens for long-sightedness. He currently works at the Teknon Medical Centre and at his own Marsden Visual Therapy Centre. He is the European Chairman for Fellowship of the International Orthokeratology Academy. He has just completed his doctoral thesis, in which he developed new contact lenses that slow the progression of myopia, a refractive defect suffered by 25 of every 100 people that involves an associated risk for eye health.