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Lamivudine Improves Visual Acuity in Center-Involved Diabetic Macular Edema

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on June 2, 2025.

By Elana Gotkine HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, June 2, 2025 -- For patients with center-involved diabetic macular edema (CI-DME), lamivudine improves visual acuity, according to a study published online May 27 in Med.

Felipe Pereira, M.D., from the Universidade Federal de São Paulo in Brazil, and colleagues conducted a randomized, double-blind trial comparing oral lamivudine with placebo for improving visual acuity in CI-DME. Twenty-four adults with one or two eyes with CI-DME and best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) less than 69 letters were randomly assigned to receive lamivudine (150 mg twice/day; 10 participants; 16 eyes) or placebo (14 participants; 21 eyes) for eight weeks. At week 4, all participants were assigned intravitreous bevacizumab (1.25 mg).

The researchers found that BCVA improved 9.8 letters with lamivudine and decreased 1.8 letters with placebo at four weeks. BCVA improved 16.9 and 5.3 letters with lamivudine and bevacizumab and placebo and bevacizumab, respectively, at eight weeks. Greater BCVA improvement was seen in association with lamivudine than with bevacizumab or ranibizumab; no difference was seen when compared with aflibercept. There was no significant between-group difference observed in retinal thickness or adverse events.

"Repurposing existing drugs such as lamivudine enables potentially immediate translation to practice and could obviate the aforementioned challenges by reducing medication cost and eliminating intravitreous injection cost," the authors write. "We anticipate that this therapeutic paradigm may be particularly impactful for underserved populations for whom regular access to eye specialists is a barrier to treatment."

Several authors disclosed ties to the biopharmaceutical industry; several authors are named as inventors on matter-related patents.

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Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

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Posted June 2025

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