A message viral on social media claims: “A student from Mumbai received the highest award from the Association of Ophthalmologists for discovering an innovative method of restoring vision at any age without the need for surgery.” This is accompanied by a website containing the testimony of Fatima, who allegedly used a capsule named Visiorax to improve her vision from -1.5 to 0.7 diopters. Let’s verify this claim through this article.
Claim: Visiorax capsule will restore vision at any age without the need for surgery.
Fact: Refractive errors like Myopia, Hyperopia, etc. can be treated either with Glasses, Contact lenses or surgery. Neither the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA )nor the Indian Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) approved the use of Visiorax to treat refractive errors. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To verify the claim’s authenticity, we first searched the internet using relevant keywords to know about the person who won the alleged “highest award from the Association of Ophthalmologists for discovering an innovative method of restoring vision at any age without the need for surgery.” This search did not lead us to any news reports supporting this claim. Further, we looked for news reports on the person named Fatima, who used Visiorax to restore her vision. This search, too, did not yield any credible evidence supporting the claim.
We learned that according to the National Eye Institute of the US, which performs vision research and education, the treatments for refractive errors like myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism, and presbyopia are either glasses, contact lenses, or surgery.
They have not listed Visiorax or, for that matter, any capsule as the solution for the refractive errors.
Visiorax is also not listed as an approved drug by either the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the Indian Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO).
When someone on Practo asked if Visiorax is an effective medicine to restore eyesight, Dr Saba Kausar, a verified ophthalmologist on Practo, said that Medicine cannot reduce refractive errors.
Spanish fact-checking website “Verifica rtve” labelled Vsiorax as a complete hoax.
Further searches revealed that in December 2021, the FDA approved the usage of eye drops named Vuity for the treatment of age-related blurry vision, known as presbyopia.
Healthline reported that this improves new vision for 2-3 hours. This is not a permanent replacement for the reading glasses.
To sum up, Visiorax capsules claiming to restore vision are neither approved by the FDA nor CDSCO.
