SpringfieldNewsSun.com

SPRINGFIELD — Eyelash enhancers can make your eyelashes grow faster and longer. But they can also cause you to go blind.

That's the warning two Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine professors issued this week after learning the product's active ingredient is a drug used to treat glaucoma.

Ophthalmologists and Wright State professors John Bullock, M.D. and Ronald E. Warwar, M.D. lobbied to put side effect labeling on latanoprost (Xalatan), a FDA-approved drug to treat glaucoma after noticing the drug had dangerous side effects, ranging from eye inflation to blindness caused by swelling of the retina. They won that labeling fight in 1998.

"As far as I was concerned that was the end of it," Bullock said.

However, last Tuesday, Bullock happened by a television broadcast about eyelash enhancers. He was surprised the secret ingredient was bimatoprost, a close relative to latanoprost. Another side effect is the product makes your lashes grow longer and faster.

"Apparently now it is being used by cosmetic companies with no background in ophthalmology," Bullock said. "To me there is a danger in that."

This month the FDA authorized U.S. Marshals to seize 12,682 applicator tubes of Age Intervention Eyelash, sold and distributed by Jan Marini Skin Research Inc. The product looks like a mascara wand allowing the product to be placed at the base of the lashes. The FDA claimed the products are "unapproved and misbranded," according to a press release.

Individuals using prescription bimatoprost could increase the risk of optic nerve damage if they also use the enhancers and other possible adverse effects in people with selling of the retina and inflammation in the eye the FDA stated.

Total seizure was more than $2 million worth of products.

"Ophthalmologists monitor glaucoma patients on these medications very closely for potential side effects but those using the drug cosmetically may develop problems that go unrecognized and untreated," Warwar said.

Springfield ophthamologist Patrick Dawson agreed.

"They do have the potential for causing inflammation," Dawson said. "We wouldn't want just anybody using it off the shelf. Anybody that's put on (latanoprost) for glaucoma, we're going to monitor."

Dawson's not a fan of cosmetics for the eyes in general.

"As an eye doctor, I see all this junk floating around on the tear film (from cosmetics)," he said. "But I know that people are not going to go without it."

His advice?

"Look for something that is hypo-allergenic and that is clinically tested," Dawson said. "Buy a brand that you know and trust."

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0347 or kbaker@coxohio.com.