Pharmacological potential of Buddleja officinalis in dry eye disease

Dry eye disease (DED) immensely decreases the quality of life in all vision-related activities, because of symptoms such as foggy vision, pain and gritty sensation. Although the underlying mechanism of DED development is not well understood, the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) has been shown to play an important role in its pathogenesis.

The available DED treatments take several weeks to achieve satisfactory effects, and in the long term can give negative side effects such as blurry vision and burning. Hence, there is a need for novel effective and safe DED treatment options.

Corneal wound healing in DED is key, therefore improving corneal cell migration could contribute to successful treatment. In addition, improving the lipid layer in the tear film, produced by the meibomian cells, in order to reduce the tear evaporation rate, could be an important treatment option.

Buddleja officinalis is a promising herbal remedy for the treatment of DED, because of its shown anti-inflammatory properties in vitro, and improving tear film stability combined with preventing DED pathogenesis in vivo. Therefore, this study evaluated two differently generated extracts of B. officinalis in a range of DED-relevant in vitro assays. Thus, a pharmacological and toxicological profile was defined in human corneal epithelial cell-transformed (HCE-T) cells, immortalized human meibomian gland epithelial cells (IHMGECs), human leukemia monocytic (THP-1) cells and Jurkat cells.

Among other promising results, both extracts showed high antioxidant effects, strong intracellular ROS reduction and promote wound healing in HCE-T cells. One of the extracts increased the size of lipid droplets secreted by IHMGECs cells, potentially beneficial for the lipid layer of the tear film. Thus, this study shows the great potential of an optimized generated B. officinalis flower extract for the development of a DED therapeutic agent.

(Source: Alexander Areesanan, Andreas Wasilewicz, Benjamin Kirchweger, Sven Nicolay, Amy Zimmermann-Klemd, Ulrike Grienke, Judith M. Rollinger, Carsten Gründemann.

Pharmacological in vitro profiling of Buddleja officinalis flower extracts in the context of dry eye disease, Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy, Volume 181, 2024, 117685)