RB helps consumers tackle dry eyes

Reckitt Benckiser (RB) has launched an online test to help consumers in the UK find out if they are suffering from dry eye and encourage pharmacists to point them to its Optrex line of eye-care products.

Accessible via www.optrex.co.uk, RB said that its Optrex Blink Test – which led consumers through a series of questions online and took up to 15 seconds to complete – had been “clinically demonstrated to offer high specificity and sensitivity for identifying the likelihood of dry eye”.

RB explained that the test was aimed at consumers both in pharmacy – where pharmacists could help them take the test and recommend Optrex products where appropriate – and at home, as there was no need for specialist equipment.

The test was particularly targetted at consumers suffering from what RB called ‘screen dry eye’, which resulted from too much time spent staring at computer screens.

“In today’s technology powered, mobile-first world,” RB commented, “we spend approximately eight hours a day looking at screens, with younger generations now often multi-screening and using more than one device at a time.”

“Staring at a screen reduces the eye’s blink rate by up to 60% and can trigger dryness, burning and irritation – a condition we call ‘screen dry eye’. It is a condition that can often be under diagnosed due to a lack of understanding of its symptoms.”

To find out if they suffer from dry eye, the test asks consumers to first blink twice and then stare straight ahead at the screen, without blinking, for as long as possible. When they start to feel discomfort, users are told press the stop button and then blink normally.

Shorter stopping times indicate either a ‘strong possibility of dry eye’ or ‘dry eye linked to moisture evaporation’, depending on the time elapsed when the stop button is clicked.

In cases where the possibility of dry eye is indicated, the test points consumers to a healthcare professional for diagnosis and also to ‘appropriate eye-care drops and sprays’ for the alleviation of symptoms.

While the test did not recommend Optrex products directly – although consumers are encouraged to ‘learn more’ about the causes of dry eye and how the Optrex range could be used to prevent and treat the symptoms – RB argued that the test could be used by pharmacists as a way of building the brand within pharmacy retail space.

Specific tests for dry eye were in many cases carried out by opticians and qualified specialists, RB pointed out, but were “costly and time consuming” and “often not provided by your every-day high street optician”. This meant that “a sufferer’s first port-of-call for treatment is usually their pharmacist”.

Furthermore, “by driving awareness of dry eye”, RB argued that pharmacists could “add value to their customers” by recommending Optrex products while “growing the category and driving sales”.

“There is no cure for dry eye,” RB admitted, but pharmacists could recommend its Optrex ActiMist 2in1 Eye Spray for dry and irritated eyes to consumers as a “particularly convenient and effective” product to help alleviate symptoms.

The ActiMist 2in1 Eye Spray – which was launched in 2015 supported by a £1.6 million (€1.8 million) digital and television marketing campaign focusing on the eye-drying effect of modern technology-mediated life – worked by spraying soy lecithin over closed eyes, which then spread across the tear film after blinking to “improve lipid layer thickness and the tear film stability” (OTC bulletin, 12 June 2015, page 16).

RB launched in 2014 its Optrex line of ‘eye-beauty’ products in the UK with a £3 million marketing campaign through television, print and online media, claiming that the brand was the first line of beauty products to be “designed to restore moisture in and around the eyes” (OTC bulletin, 21 February 2014, page 16).

The latest product to be added to the range was the Optrex Warming Eye Mask in 2016, which used a chemical reaction between iron oxide and oxygen when to produce heat lasting between three-and-five minutes. The Eye Mask was described by RB at the time as “a portable wellbeing aid to help with the everyday strains placed on the eyes”.