Meta analysis about the efficacy and safety of anti-ocular hypertension eye drops without benzalkonium chloride

Objective: To explore the safety and efficacy of eye drops without benzalkonium chloride (BAK) in treating glaucoma and ocular hypertension. Methods: The clinical case control literatures about eye drops without BAK treating glaucoma and ocular hypertension were retrieved in PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane and Chinese Biological and Medical database. Meta 5.0 software was used to analyze the literatures. Results: Five clinical control studies were included. The results indicated both eye drops could lower the intraocular pressure, and the intraocular pressure-lowering difference between two eye drops was 0.07 mmHg (95% CI: 0.04, 0.19) (P>0.05). Two adverse reactions occurred more were conjunctival injection (10.78%) and allergic conjunctivitis (4.78%). The odd ratio of two eye drops occurring conjunctival injection and allergic conjunctivitis was 0.67 (95% CI, 0.25, 1.10) and 0.82 (95% CI, 0.09, 1.54), respectively (P<0.05) in fixed effect model. Conclusions: There is no difference between the eye drops with or without BAK in lowering intraocular pressure, but the latter is of higher safety. In consideration of the relatively small sample size of this research, more high quality clinical research contrasts are needed as evidence.