A report by The Business Research Company predicts that the global dry eye medication market will grow to around US$4.8bn in 2025, up from US$2.9bn in 2015.
Factors in the market’s growth to date include an ageing population, a growing number of contact lens users, an increase in disposable income, a rise in allergy sufferers, continued growth in unhealthy eating and a prevalence of diabetes mellitus, plus increasing treatment options, said researchers. Future growth in the dry eye disease (DED) medication market will be driven by an increase in laser surgeries, screen time, diabetes, busy lifestyles, DED itself and, again, the growing number of promising drugs in the DED pipeline coupled with the side-effects of other medications.
Report authors cautioned, however, that growth will be tempered by increasingly stringent drug approval processes (noting that Forbes calculated that pharmaceutical companies spend on average US$350m per drug prior to launch) and by the disruption of the supply chains that support drug development and distribution, due to Covid-19.
The Business Research Company also highlighted that new medication delivery systems in liquid drops will gain more than US$1,492m in global annual sales by 2025, given the dominance of the evaporative DED market. Further, the eye ointment market will become the fastest-growing segment, with an expected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.2%.
Geographically, while the US represented almost a third of the 2020 global market, the Middle East and Africa are expected to be the fastest-growing regions (CAGR of 20.2% and 12.1%, respectively).
