Copying this most interesting (and amazing!) post by Ravenlocke o the breaking News thread:
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From Vigilant Fox 🦊
Nov 3
This 75-year-old man, who’s been blind since birth, suddenly regained his eyesight after using DMSO to treat sinusitis.
It cleared his sinuses “instantly,” Murray says, but what it did to his sight was “unbelievable.”
For the first time in his life, he was finally able to see color in his left eye.
And when he kept using DMSO, his vision kept improving: He could make out details and even count fingers, something he “could never do before.”
It might sound like a coincidence, but DMSO has been repeatedly shown to heal eye issues medicine still can't solve, like blindness, macular degeneration, floaters and cataracts.
It's Big Pharma’s worst nightmare. And it’s hiding in plain sight for just $20 a bottle. 🧵
https://x.com/VigilantFox/status/1985424929467347431
https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/d...and-transforms
DMSO Heals the Eyes and Transforms Ophthalmology
DMSO's unique therapeutic properties reveal the unifying thread between many different "incurable" eye diseases.
A Midwestern Doctor
• DMSO is an “umbrella remedy” capable of treating a wide range of challenging ailments due to its combination of therapeutic properties (e.g., reducing inflammation, improving circulation, and reviving dying cells).
• DMSO has a unique affinity for the eyes, resulting in it (often spontaneously) treating a wide range of visual disorders that frequently cannot be treated with conventional therapeutic options.
• DMSO’s ability to restore circulation, revive dying cells, and stabilize misfolded proteins allows it to treat a variety of retinal diseases (e.g., macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy or retinitis pigmentosa—in some cases reversing permanent blindness), eliminate visual obstructions (e.g., floaters and cataracts), reverse glaucoma or Fuchs’ dystrophy, and restore normal focus (frequently eliminating the need for glasses).
• DMSO’s anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties allow it to treat dry eyes, inflammatory diseases around the eye (e.g., blepharitis, styes, and psoriasis) or within the eye (e.g., iritis, uveitis, conjunctivitis, keratitis), along with bacterial, fungal, parasitic, or viral eye infections such as shingles.
•DMSO’s healing properties also allow it to heal a variety of eye injuries (including severe ones which would otherwise require eye removal), skin issues around the eye (e.g., burns, skin tags, and under-eye bags), and eliminate eye muscle spasms.
•This article will review the extensive data demonstrating DMSO’s efficacy for eye diseases, along with an examination of the most common protocols used for them and other natural approaches that also aid in the treatment of common eye disorders.
Since 2024, I have been working diligently to present the extensive data that DMSO is a remarkable therapeutic that is uniquely suited to treat many highly challenging medical conditions due to its counteracting many root causes of disease (whereas, in contrast, vaccines cause a myriad of health issues by inducing those key drivers of illness). From this, I’ve compiled a series of articles synthesizing thousands of studies that have shown DMSO effectively treats:
Strokes, paralysis, a wide range of neurological disorders (e.g., Down Syndrome and dementia), and many circulatory disorders (e.g., Raynaud’s, varicose veins, hemorrhoids), which I discussed here.
A wide range of tissue injuries, such as sprains, concussions, burns, surgical incisions, and spinal cord injuries (discussed here).
Chronic pain (e.g., from a bad disc, bursitis, arthritis, or complex regional pain syndrome), which I discussed here.
A wide range of autoimmune, protein, and contractile disorders, such as scleroderma, amyloidosis, and interstitial cystitis (discussed here).
A variety of head conditions, such as tinnitus, vision loss, dental problems, and sinusitis (discussed here).
A wide range of internal organ diseases (discussed here).
Many different respiratory disorders, including asthma and COPD (discussed here)
Many different gastrointestinal disorders, such as bowel inflammation, cirrhosis, and pancreatitis (discussed here)
A wide range of skin conditions, such as burns, varicose veins, acne, hair loss, ulcers, skin cancer, and many autoimmune dermatologic diseases (discussed here).
Many challenging infectious conditions, including chronic bacterial infections, herpes, and shingles (discussed here).
Many aspects of cancer (e.g., many of cancer’s debilitating symptoms, making cancer treatments more potent, greatly reducing the toxicity of conventional therapies, and turning cancer cells back into normal cells), which I discussed here.
Since the evidence in those articles (along with one on how DMSO can be synergistically combined with pharmaceuticals and another on how DMSO combines with natural therapies) made a compelling case for the use of DMSO, many readers opted to start using it. Many of them, in turn, had remarkable improvements which caused them to recommend DMSO to their peers, and because of all those successes, a widespread interest in DMSO has now emerged.
On one hand, this has been quite surprising to me as the information I publicized has been widely available for decades, but (possibly due to it being impossible to profit off DMSO because of how little it costs) most of the people exposed to this series were not even aware this therapy existed, let alone what DMSO could do. Conversely, the groundswell of interest is not surprising as it’s nearly identical to what happened when DMSO was first discovered in the 1960s and it rapidly became the most popular drug in America—particularly since relatively minimal progress has been made on most of the “incurable” conditions it cured back then. Consider for example this 1980 segment 60 minutes created, which showed the remarkable results generated from the therapeutic use of DMSO and more importantly, the exact same stonewalling and suppression of DMSO from the FDA that we saw throughout COVID-19:
User DMSO Reports
Because of DMSO’s high degree of efficacy, the moment I began the series, I started being flooded with testimonials from readers of the remarkable improvements DMSO had created for them. Before long, I realized I was in a similar situation to what I’d been in throughout COVID-19.
I have long believed one of the core strategies the ruling class always follows is to establish rigid hierarchical systems that have dominion over critical facets of society and then buy out the top of the pyramid, as that provides a relatively low-cost way to control the entire society. In the case of medicine, this has translated to having pharmaceutical compliant individuals (through industry funding and media complicity) be anointed as experts who reinforce the profitable orthodoxy alongside having medical journals only publish things which cater to the existing vested interests.
Because of this, things that are “controversial” (threatening vested interests) are rarely published in a “credible” medium, and as a result, anyone who tries to advocate for them is not listened to; instead, they are chastised for endorsing “unproven” and unscientific beliefs.
When the COVID vaccines hit the market, I had expected they would cause a significant number of chronic issues that would take years to be recognized—so I was quite shocked to be immediately flooded with reports across the country of severe reactions of all types from the vaccine. Because of this, I felt I needed to log them as I knew injuries like these would never get published in medical journals and I wanted to have some type of proof that vaccine injuries were real, so in the future I could present accurate information to skeptical parties. I hence spent an inordinate amount of time interviewing those involved and compiling all of them and after unexpectedly gaining a Substack audience, I published that log, and it went viral because my small sample accurately represented the pattern of vaccine injuries everyone was seeing around them and because more than a year into the COVID vaccine rollout, no one had done anything similar—despite the massive demand for this type of information.
In the process of doing that, I had also received a lot of reports of individuals who appeared to be being injured by COVID vaccine shedding—despite this being “impossible” based on the purported design of the vaccines. As the reports, like those for the COVID-19 vaccine injuries, were consistent in character (and like the vaccines many affected by shedding were understandably desperate for information on the topic) I decided to spend a year compiling thousands of those reports as I knew there would never be a journal willing to touch the subject. Following this, I then produced a synthesis of that data which showed there were clear repeating patterns to mRNA shedding and provided the critical mechanisms to explain this seemingly inexplicable phenomenon. That, in turn, was an inordinate amount of work to do, but succeeded and made many realize shedding is a real risk of the mRNA technology—something which will be critical for opposing future attempts to inject the population with experimental gene therapies.
In the case of DMSO, as I started receiving all of these reports (at a time when I had essentially finished the shedding project), I realized that I had access to a unique dataset that had not previously been available. More importantly, because there were so many different things that DMSO could treat, a dataset like this would likely be the only place much of that therapeutic data could ever be compiled (as no one would ever get around to conducting studies on many of those uses—particularly since the current academic publishing climate is much more hostile to publishing unorthodox research now than it was fifty years ago).
So, over the last 13 months, one of my primary projects has been to compile all the reports I’ve received (which I did in the comments here), and I presently have 4,721 comments—of which I think roughly 3,000 are unique stories of therapeutic benefit people have experienced. In turn, my plan is to eventually compile and synthesize all of that, but as doing that will take at least a month, I’ve held off until the end of the series (so I wouldn’t have to redo it with new data that was subsequently received).
Note: my general sense from all the testimonials I’ve received is that between 80-90% of users have a positive response to using DMSO (which is frankly extraordinary), with lower rates (50%) being seen for certain issues which are harder to correctly treat with DMSO, and give or take 0% success rates being seen for issues DMSO is not thought to treat (suggesting the sample I’m observing is representative of real life data).
Within those comments, while most of the reports I’ve received are consistent with what DMSO is recognized to do (e.g., rapidly eliminating debilitating pain that nothing else had worked on), some were quite extraordinary and not what I’d expected to come across. For example, after I learned a 75 year old reader who’d been blind since birth had regained their sight after using DMSO to treat a sinus issue, I realized his story needed to be shared:
Note: as fate had it, Murray lived about 3 hours away from Rebecca Cunningham, the Texas-based documentary film maker who cured her neighbor’s terminal COPD with nebulized DMSO, after which millions saw Dan’s COPD story.1,2 As DMSO changed her life, she is currently collecting other DMSO testimonials on her Rumble channel and kindly agreed to travel to Murray to film this. If you have a story to share and are ever passing through Wimberley or visiting the hill country in Texas, please reach out to her.
In compiling these reports, I was struck by how many were for the eyes, by how well DMSO worked across an extensive range of eye conditions, and by the fact that, in the majority of cases, it provided better results than could be expected from existing ophthalmology options.
Note: the only well-recognized ophthalmologic conditions I did not receive reports on were amblyopia, strabismus, diabetic retinopathy, keratitis, optic neuritis, retinal detachment, retinopathy of prematurity, chalazions, central retinal vein occlusion (although a reader’s branched retinal vein occlusion responded to DMSO), and eye cancers—many of which, as I will show in this article, existing data sources suggest do respond to DMSO.
Later, while translating the discoveries of the German community, I learned their data matched that of the readers here:
One of the first new adopters of DMSO (circa 2012), began successfully using highly diluted DMSO for eye treatments in his practice. This led to a network of practitioners using DMSO for eye health, accumulating substantial experience, and, in many cases, treating eye issues where the cause could not be determined.
In general, there are a surprising number of successful reports using DMSO eye drops for a wide variety of eye symptoms and diseases. So many, in fact, that I now consider the DMSO eye solution an exceptional “eye care.”
Many users (especially those with heavy screen time) apply DMSO preventively to maintain eye freshness, improve tear quality, and reduce night glare. Positive effects, including improved vision, better tear film, fresher eyes, and reduced night glare, are often reported after the first few applications, enhancing overall eye comfort and function—including in people whom ophthalmologists did not diagnose with any eye conditions.
The positive effects are often reported after the first few applications, but I consider [low dose eye drops] a longer-term option. Due to the excellent diagnostic results and the complete absence of adverse effects from low dose drops (including results from ophthalmologists for a wide range of eye disorders) I increasingly view DMSO eye drops as a preventative measure, eye care for those with (still) healthy eyes, since modern life, particularly excessive screen time, places significant demands on our eyes.
Note: the above was extracted from an AI-generated summary of hundreds of hours of non-English lectures, then further condensed by me and hence not a direct quote (but one that accurately represents the author’s statements).
While this might be difficult to believe, consider a parallel situation. Another umbrella remedy I have been deeply impressed by, ultraviolet blood irradiation (which has many similar therapeutic properties to DMSO), has a vast volume of literature demonstrating its clinical value—including for numerous immensely challenging to treat diseases. Yet, virtually none of the medical profession even knows this therapy exists.
For this reason, we are currently sorting through thousands of UVBI studies, including dozens of studies (many of which were conducted with hundreds of patients) which show UVBI treats a myriad of challenging ophthalmologic conditions such as:
blepharitis,1 keratitis,1 corneal inflammation,1 herpes zoster ophthalmicus,1 traumatic eye infection,1 uveitis,1,2,3,4,5 iridocyclitis,1,2 choroiditis,1 chorioretinopathy,1,2,3,4 choroidal and chorioretinal dystrophy,1,2 macular degeneration,1 retinitis pigmentosa,1,2 retinal contusion,1 retinal ischemia,1,2 retinal and fundus hemorrhages,1,2,3,4 retinal artery and vein occlusions,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15 diabetic retinopathy,1 ischemic optic neuropathy,1,2,3,4,5 optic neuritis,1,2,3 optic nerve atrophy (traumatic or inflammatory),1,2,3 encephalopathic vision loss1
Note: in this article, each superscipt number links to either a reader’s story or an applicable study—like the many I listed above (which the ophthalmology profession does not realize exists).
As such, the purpose of this article will be to highlight exactly how DMSO is transforming ophthalmology, along with the supporting data.
Note: the best review paper on DMSO’s uses in ophthalmology (which is an excellent resource to provide to physicians who are skeptical of using DMSO for the eyes) can be read here.
The History and Safety of DMSO
One of the major questions everyone has with DMSO is, “How could I never have heard of something that costs almost nothing and safely treats a broad swathe of ailments?”
For this reason, and to head off the inevitable attacks any off-patent therapy which threatens the pharmaceutical industry faces, two of the earliest articles I wrote in this series were written to explain that peculiar history.1,2 The abridged version of them is as follows:
DMSO is found throughout nature and is present in many fruits and vegetables. After being discovered in 1866, it was forgotten until the 1940s when an industrial need for more solvents led to it being re-examined. In the 1950s, one company that was the primary American producer of it (by extracting it from wood pulp) assigned one of its chemists (Herschler) to determine whether any other uses existed for the solvents they were producing.
Herschler eventually discovered DMSO could bring substances into the body (making it an ideal drug delivery option), and in 1961, reached out to a leading researcher at the local medical school, Dr. Stanley Jacob. Jacob, having recently learned it had just been discovered DMSO could be used as a cryopreservative (solving a major challenge in medicine), was receptive to Herschler. Jacob began experimenting and rapidly discovered DMSO had a number of remarkable therapeutic properties which transformed medicine, so before long, he decided to invest his entire career (and personal life) behind DMSO. Fortunately, once Jacob (an exceptionally selfless individual) used up his life savings to conduct the initial DMSO research, the Dean at his medical school decided to support him with additional funding and protect him from his hostile peers (which was an immense stroke of luck).
Before long, skeptical doctors in Oregon were gradually won over due to the incredible results DMSO produced, and pharmaceutical companies began making massive investments in DMSO. At this point, production of medical DMSO shifted entirely to synthetic sources, as it was not possible to achieve the high purity required for pharmaceuticals from wood-derived preparations, despite the slightly higher cost of the synthetic route.
Around this same time, the FDA just barely averted a national thalidomide disaster, and used the public attention around this to pass a 1962 law which gave them broad powers to police the production of medications in the United States.
In 1964, Jacob and pharmaceutical company representatives met with the FDA scientist who stopped thalidomide, who told them the FDA wanted to do everything possible to permit further testing of DMSO. However, she also shared, they were simultaneously worried about being overwhelmed by a large number of DMSO drug applications. Because of this, DMSO became the FDA’s test case to work out its new regulatory powers, and a variety of roadblocks were put in place against it.
Nonetheless, the remarkable trial results kept coming in, DMSO rapidly became the most demanded drug in America, and much of the public simply ignored the FDA’s requests to refrain from using a remedy which had not yet been proven safe or effective and started using DMSO themselves. In short, the FDA was eager to halt DMSO research. Then, on September 9th 1965, a woman taking numerous drugs including DMSO, with multiple allergic reactions to what she ingested eventually had a fatal anaphylactic reaction. In response, the FDA began cancelling existing drug investigation permits—despite the death never being linked to DMSO (nor anything similar having happened since).
Then in November, data emerged showing that very high doses of DMSO, far above those ever used, could change the refractive index in dogs eyes (effectively making them require glasses). At that point, the FDA banned all DMSO research in the United States and sent out a global telegram that DMSO could make you blind—despite no issues being observed in any of the 37,000 clinical trial participants (or the other 100,000 people using DMSO). In contrast, numerous commonly used drugs are known change the refractory index in humans.1,2,3,4
Note: this is why so many studies I’ve cited in this series were researched between 1961-1965 and not later.
The scientific and patient community understandably rebelled against this, at which point the FDA decided to wage a war of intimidation to assert its newfound powers and bring the medical community into compliance (which was ultimately successful and part of why researchers now rarely pursue unorthodox topics).
The scientific community fought back, and before long produced robust data showing that DMSO had no toxicity at all (e.g., in one 1975 study, prisoners had their entire body covered with DMSO gel daily for 90 days and then were subject to every test imaginable—with no toxicity being detected), along with hosting numerous symposiums showing promising DMSO research from around the world.
Note: around this time, DMSO eye drops came into use, and have been estimated to have now been used without issue by hundreds of thousands of people.
Sadly, for decades, the FDA refused to relent, and eventually numerous Congressional hearings were held (the first of which was immediately preceded by the 60 Minutes segment, as Mike Wallace wanted to draw national attention to the issue).
To defend their increasingly unpopular prohibition on DMSO, the FDA repeatedly claimed they would soon approve DMSO, and just needed “well controlled studies”—which by the FDA’s arbitrary standards were impossible to do with DMSO, as the rapidity with which it elicited improvements alongside the characteristic odor and skin irritation it created made it impossible to ever conduct blinded studies.
Note: the one approved use of DMSO (for interstitial cystitis) occurred shortly before the 1980 hearing, possibly to address criticisms that they were stonewalling DMSO.
Eventually, in response to outrage over the FDA raiding natural medicine suppliers at gunpoint, Congress passed the 1994 DSHEA Act which took away the FDA’s ability to regulate natural products (and hence DMSO), but sadly by this point, decades of prohibition had made DMSO largely forgotten. Following this, DMSO began being incorporated into a variety of pharmaceutical products as a “safe and inert” ingredient which facilitated the function of the active ingredients. While in tandem, extensive research continued to be conducted on its uses in medicine (with tens of thousands having now been published).
DMSO’s Toxicity
Most assessments showed DMSO was orders of magnitude safer than many commonly used therapeutic substances (e.g., its LD50 across species is approximately 20 g/kg, and cells exhibit no adverse effects from prolonged exposure until DMSO concentrations exceed 1%—which is effectively impossible to reach in the body as nearly a liter of DMSO would need to be drunk each day).
Note: as cells are quite sensitive to changes in their external environment, similar effects to those observed with 1% DMSO are seen for many other “safe” substances at far lower concentrations. However, these toxicities are typically not clinically relevant as pharmaceutical drugs rapidly dilute in the body, exposing tissues to minimal concentrations of them.
Similarly, on the FDA’s system for reporting adverse drug reactions (FAERS), since 1980, a minimal number of adverse events have been reported for DMSO (most of which were due to its characteristic side effects—odor or temporary irritation at the site of application).
Within the (extremely vague and incomplete) reports there, I have only been able to find three deaths potentially linked to DMSO—one in Germany from an overdose from a lot of oral DMSO, one from a fatal bladder hemorrhage after a DMSO combination was put into it, and one from an anaphylactic reaction (along with eight from IV DMSO where the other injected substances were not listed). In contrast, numerous commonly used drugs kill dozens of people each day.
To illustrate how rare adverse events are, in the last 13 months (where DMSO use increased significantly due to this series), only one adverse event was reported to the FDA specifically for DMSO—someone being upset that their cannabidiol (CBD) was combined with DMSO.
Likewise, within the reader reports I’ve received, temporary skin irritation (due to using too high a DMSO concentration) and unwanted odors were by far the most commonly reported, along with a small number of temporary headaches, nausea, local potentially allergic reactions, or an existing rash worsening (rather than improving). To the best of my knowledge, only seven people have shared a significant response to me (e.g., from potentiating an anti-arrhythmic drug requiring a lower dose to be used, mixing DMSO with arnica they were allergic to, or DMSO mobilizing a known chronic toxicity within the body—resulting in their overall symptomatology worsening).
Note: when I published the DMSO series, I never expected it to take off the way it had, and before long, I became quite worried I would start receiving reports of significant complications from it due to just how many people were using it, the numerous (theoretical) issues which can arise from accidentally combining it with a toxin or allergen and the fact that I have seen patients, particularly sensitive individuals, have negative reactions to just about every therapy out there (which is why I’ve put so much emphasis in each article on how to use DMSO safely).
It has hence been jaw dropping to me that so few significant DMSO reactions have been shared with me. Conversely, when I’ve looked at reports within the broader DMSO community, the primary issue appears to be combining DMSO with more toxic pharmaceuticals (e.g., fluoroquinolone antibiotics or certain chemotherapies) as it increases the probability the severe side effects associated with standard doses of those drugs will occur (leading to it being advised to space them out by at least two hours), or with IV infusions of DMSO as higher IV doses can increase parasympathetic tone and slow the heart rate.
DMSO and The Eyes
Ophthalmologist Norbert J. Becquet, M.D., of Little Rock, Arkansas, reported to the American Academy of Medical Preventics [now ACAM] in May 1980 that he had great success using DMSO in treating cataracts and other eye problems. “I’ve treated two hundred patients in the last year for macular degeneration, macular edema, and traumatic uveitis.”
DMSO’s uses for the eyes originally emerged after participants in early clinical trials noted that their vision frequently improved when an unrelated issue was being treated. Noticing this in several patients being treated for musculoskeletal issues, Stanley Jacob referred them to a local ophthalmologist, who then conducted years of research in this area.
I started using DMSO for my arthritis and the side effects were improved vision and better breathing
Likewise, readers here have frequently reported that vision significantly improves after DMSO is applied to another part of the body—particularly the neck (which is likely due to its blood supply being closer to the eyes).
I will now attempt to cover all pertinent data explaining why DMSO helps the eyes and the specific conditions it has been observed to improve (which comprise most standard ophthalmologic conditions—including many that have no good conventional treatment options).
Note: DMSO’s uses for the eyes have been known about in the right circles for a long time (e.g., one reader shared their gifted alternative MD suggested it over 20 years ago).
Ocular DMSO Distribution
The logic behind putting DMSO in the eyes is that a much stronger dose can get to the eyes than what would arise from systemic applications of DMSO. To evaluate DMSO’s distribution (and that of its metabolic breakdown products), radioactive forms of DMSO (DMSO synthesized from either 35S or 3H or both) were placed in animals and then their entire bodies were monitored for radiation emissions.
In one study, it was noted that while DMSO tended to distribute evenly throughout the body (typically being at a lower concentration in the tissue than in the blood), in the iris and ciliary body, it matched the blood’s concentration, while in the cornea (the surface of the eye), after 2 hours it was 2.2 times higher than the blood in rabbits and 4 times higher in rats (but did not increase with repeated admissions). In other words, DMSO specifically concentrates in the cornea when administered into the body (after which it rapidly cleared), which likely explains why incidental improvements in vision are repeatedly observed when DMSO is used in another part of the body and to some extent concentrated in the vitreous (however I cannot say how much it concentrates within the vitreous portion of the eye as I have not come across any data on this). This concentrating is important as it explains why low doses of DMSO frequently incidentally improve the eyes.
Note: in humans, when DMSO was taken each day at 3-30 times the standard dose (achieved by covering the entire body in DMSO), 9% of participants experienced burning or aching eyes—again indicating DMSO concentrates in the cornea. However, even at these high doses, other than temporary eye irritation, no adverse effects occurred to the eyes.
Conversely, in another study, where rats’ eyes were exposed to DMSO, it was found that regardless of the route of administration or the concentration used, DMSO rapidly cleared from the eyes:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!BxO7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc42a958e-b758-4daf-92f2-c42e3a09d5a7_1718x732.png
This in turn, suggests that DMSO can rapidly extract things from the eyes that should not be there (e.g., excessive fluid) as whatever is in the eye will be drawn out into the rest of the body with the DMSO that leaves the eyes.
DMSO Eye Safety
Due to the intense scrutiny placed upon DMSO because of the potential refractory issues and the inherent uncertainty over if DMSO could be placed in the eyes, extensive research was conducted on its eye safety. From this, no study—including high dose ones in humans or primates was able to detect eye toxicity from DMSO (all of which I summarized here—including a JAMA publication attesting to DMSO’s eye safety).
Furthermore, in addition to the effects of systemic DMSO upon the eyes, the effects of DMSO applied directly to the eyes have also been studied, where it has been found no toxicity occurs beyond temporary irritation at higher concentrations unless high doses are directly injected into the eyes—something I believe is reflective of DMSO’s tendency to rapidly dilute once it enters the body (making local high concentrations only possible to achieve with injections). Those studies are as follows:
1. The most detailed study put various combinations of steroids, 15% DMSO, or a saline placebo into rabbit’s eyes. A wide range of parameters inside the eyes were studied (e.g., regular body weights, intraocular pressure, retinoscopy, ophthalmoscopic, and biomicroscopic examinations alongside dissection of the eyes and examinations of their contents), alongside those outside the eye (e.g., urine volume, urine composition, blood work, autopsies of organs) were then assessed. From this, it was found that 15% DMSO created no adverse effects, but did:
•Increase urine volume—DMSO alone increased it by 14.6%, while when added to varying concentrations of fluocinolone acetonide (a steroid), it increased by 4%, 29%, or 58% (which again illustrates that DMSO moves into the bloodstream after being applied to the eyes).
•Cause a slight decrease in urea in the aqueous humor of the eyes (which was small enough that it may have been due to chance).
•Decrease intraocular pressure (which is often quite helpful for the eyes).
Additionally, this study also applied 30% and 100% DMSO to rabbit eyes. In both cases, no evidence of change was seen in any part of the eye (the iris, cornea, lens, retina, conjunctiva, and lids), but 100% DMSO was observed to cause temporary lacrimation (tearing).
2. A separate paper on the known toxicology of DMSO also noted that:
•A Draize eye test (applying DMSO to an animal’s eye and keeping it on the eye) resulted in a slight conjunctivitis (eye irritation) which disappeared within 24 hours.
•One study found ocular instillation of 0.1 ml of 100% DMSO in rabbits caused reversible irritation of the conjunctivae, while another author failed to observe this effect.
•In humans, two drops of greater than 50% DMSO applied to the eye caused a temporary burning sensation and vasodilation; concentrations of less than 50% exhibited no toxic effects.
3. Another study found that DMSO gave eye drops at 66% concentration to four patients, and one of the four experienced a temporary burning each time the drops were applied. Likewise, varying degrees of irritation and burning occurred as higher concentrations were used. However, no damage (as shown by a fluorescein stain) occurred to either their eyes or the animals in the study after ocular DMSO applications.
That same study also gave 4 rabbits 90% DMSO to the eyes six times a day, and then after 2 weeks, DMSO at 66% six times a day. At 90%, 2 of the rabbits experienced a temporary severe conjunctival injection (red eyes from swelling and inflammation of the blood vessels in the eye), but no keratitis (inflammation of the cornea) or damage to the lens was observed, and of the 6 total rabbits who received ocular DMSO, 3 had some degree of conjunctival irritation from DMSO.
Note: one Substack author recently chronicled an experiment where they repeatedly applied 100% DMSO to their eyes (a concentration much greater than what it typically recommended) and noted no side effects besides five minutes of irritation (along with a noticeable improvement in vision and their floaters mostly disappearing).
4. Another study injected 1%, 10%, 50%, or 100% DMSO into rabbit eyes. Single injections produced temporary eye irritation, with no long-term toxic effects. Transient retinal toxicity was seen 1 hour after injection of DMSO, but cleared completely in 1 month. When DMSO was repeatedly injected into the eyes, cataracts were observed to develop in 6-8 weeks.
5. A human study reported giving topical DMSO to the eyes of 108 patients (for a total of 157 eyes) at a higher concentration than others used. That author noted that no toxicity or eye issues were observed (with monitoring periods up to 19 months post treatment), including in patients with pre-existing eye issues (e.g., 8 glaucoma patients who frequently had their intraocular pressure rise when given a steroid did not have it rise from DMSO and likewise 17 patients with pre-existing cataracts did not have them worsen from DMSO).
None of the human eyes treated with topically applied DMSO for periods ranging from approximately one month to fifteen months exhibited any evidence of corneal injury or deposits (which are sometimes seen with certain eye medications), cataract development, or refractive changes, while varying degrees of conjunctival irritation and complaints of burning occurred with the use of the higher concentrations.
6. An unpublished study (detailed in this 1980 book), of a series of 30 German patients (along with 280 more treated for various periods) who took DMSO detected no adverse effects in any of the subject’s eyes, with one author noting the dosages required to create the lens effects seen in animals were astronomical compared to what humans took.
Note: I have now received a large number of reports from readers who shared they’ve used DMSO eye drops for a prolonged period without issues (e.g. here are 15 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15 along with two in dogs1,2).
The existing data also shows the toxicity threshold for DMSO to the eyes is much higher than the doses eyes will be exposed to from clinical applications (as the small amounts of DMSO dilute and rapidly pass through the eyes rather than remaining concentrated in one spot). For example:
•Low concentrations of DMSO (0.01%) were not found to subsequently affect retinal function, whereas low concentrations of alcohol did.
•A 2004 study demonstrated DMSO had negligible toxicity to the eyes. It found that keeping human retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells in 1% DMSO for 48 hours slightly decreased their viability (demonstrated through a reduced optical density), while 2% (after 72 hours) slowed their growth,1,2 while a study on rabbit RPEs showed that 4% DMSO after 48 hours significantly increased apoptosis and enhanced their antioxidant ability.
Note: when I compared this to sustained exposures from other commonly used drugs, similar toxicities were seen at much lower concentrations (typically between 0.24% to 0.00072%).
•When DMSO was injected intravitreally into rat eyes, 0.1–0.2% showed no detectable effects on scotopic b-wave amplitudes, while 0.5% caused mild increases and 1.0% caused significant increases, suggesting 0.2% or less has no functional impairment in retinal ERG. In contrast, other substances tested intravitreally, such as GABA, glycine, or glutamate antagonists, affected b-wave amplitudes (e.g., suppressing it) at concentrations ranging from ~0.0001–0.19%. In another rat study, DMSO injections below 0.6% had no effect on retinal ERGs, but above that, there was a temporary suppression.
Note: DMSO has long been used to preserve corneas1,2 as it has a low enough toxicity to the eyes that high concentrations of it (e.g., 10%) can be used to cryopreserve corneal and conjunctival cells and prevent otherwise lethal cold from destroying them.1,2
Finally, one of the most common questions I receive is whether DMSO can be used on the eyes with artificial interocular lenses (IOLs). Presently, I am relatively certain DMSO eye drops of low concentrations are not an issue as:
•Dilute DMSO almost never leaches materials, and drops of lower concentrations applied to the eyes rapidly dilute as they slowly enter the eyes through the cornea.
•The most common (but not all) types of IOLs are fairly resistant to DMSO.
•The American Academy of Ophthalmology has said there is no evidence of DMSO harming IOLs (although it’s not clear if this refers to DMSO taken in other parts of the body or applied directly to the eyes)
•German ophthalmologists have reported no issues with low dose DMSO eye drops and IOLs.
•No one in the DMSO community has reported issues either, and instead have found that DMSO frequently is quite helpful for healing complications of eye surgeries.
However, I do not know if high dose DMSO eye drops can be used with IOLs as different lens materials have different sensitivities to DMSO, in many cases that information is not available (e.g., German ophthalmologists who tried to find out what plasticizers are in the lens and their DMSO solubility have not been able to get the information they needed from manufacturers).
Likewise, while I have not been able to find a case where this actually happened, my primary concern is that while it’s highly unlikely DMSO will ever reach the strength needed to dissolve IOLs, a small amount of interaction with DMSO (from high concentration eye drops) could theoretically distort lens enough that it needs to be replaced.
In short, every source I’ve looked at advises only using low dose DMSO if you have IOLs.
Note: if you have contacts, they should never be used in conjunction with DMSO and enough time should be given between the two to prevent there from being any DMSO remaining on the eye to interact with them.
The rest of the article is here,
https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/d...and-transforms
Re: DMSO for Eyes: Glaucoma, Cataracts, Strain, Vision, Retinitis and the Organ Responsible for Eye Care
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