Differential pharmacology and clinical utility of preservative-free tafluprost in the treatment of ocular hypertension and glaucoma.

Glaucoma is a chronic disease requiring lifelong treatment. Discomfort due to medications may affect patients' quality of life and may cause poor compliance, which leads to poor intraocular pressure control. To minimize the side effects of long-term treatment, preparations with lower benzalkonium chloride concentrations, preservative-free preparations and alternative preservatives have been developed and reported to have a lower rate of side effects. Tafluprost, launched on the ophthalmic market in 2008, is a new 16-phenoxy analogue of prostaglandin F(2α), clinically used as an ocular hypotensive agent for the treatment of glaucoma and ocular hypertension. The safety and intraocular pressure-lowering efficacy of tafluprost has been demonstrated in various preclinical and clinical studies.