Optilast contains the following active ingredients:

Active Ingredients: Azelastine Hydrochloride, the equivalent on 0.05mg/ml (0.05%)

The following inactive ingredients are usually found in Optilast:

Benzalkonium chloride (preservative), disodium edetate, hypromellose, sorbitol, (crystallising) sodium hydroxide and water for injections.

This list is not exhaustive. For further information please contact us.

Do not use Optilast if you have a known allergy to azelastine or any other ingredient in this medicine.

Talk to your doctor or pharmacist before using Optilast:

• if you are not sure whether your eye problems are caused by an allergy. Watch for the following, these are not usually allergies:
  • if only one eye is affected
  • if you are having problems with your vision
  • your eye hurts and you have no symptoms in your nose.  This may be an infection rather than an allergy
• if the symptoms worsen or last longer than 48 hours without improvement despite using Optilast.
• if you wear contact lenses,

Other Medicines

Optilast is not known to interact with other medicines but if you are using other eye drops please ensure you leave a gap of 5-10 minutes to ensure both medicines have the chance to work.  

Driving and Operating Heavy Machinery 

Care should be exercised if using this product immediately before driving as these drops may temporarily blur your vision. This will soon clear. It is unusual to experience side effects with Optilast but mild irritation of the eye is occasionally reported.

Pregnancy and Breastfeeding

Unfortunately, we cannot recommend you use Optilast during pregnancy or breastfeeding due to a lack of safety data.  

Pregnancy – Insufficient evidence about safety. High-dose oral Azelastine has been shown to cause adverse events.

Breastfeeding – Azelastine can be found in breast milk.

Preservatives

This allergy eye drop contains a preservative Benzalkonium Chloride and because of this, it is unsuitable for patients who wear soft contact lenses. If you wear contact lenses then you should look for an eye drop without preservatives, for example, Ketofall.

If you must use this product then take out your lenses when administering the eye drop and do not reinsert them until at least 15 minutes have passed. Optilast is known to discolour lenses.

Unfortunately, we cannot recommend this product for those under 18 years of age or patients who have known allergies to the ingredients.

Can you buy Optilast over the counter?

Optilast eye drops are a prescription only medicine (POM), which means that they cannot be bought over the counter routinely at your local pharmacy like Boots, Asda or Superdrug.

It can however be prescribed by doctors and other non-medical healthcare professionals.

Olopatadine or Azelastine?

Both Azelastine and Olopatadine are antihistamine eye drops, and both posses both antihistamine and mast cell stabalising effects.  These new generation drugs are a signifiacnt improvement on previous generations due to the numerous ways in which they treat an prevent allerguc reactions ocurring.  So, which one is better.  A study in 2010 rated Olaopatadine as marginally more effective than Azelastine, with many individuals reporting a stinging sensation when using azelastine eye drops. It is worth noting that many patients actually got full symptom relief and actually preferred using Azelastine.

Williams PB, Crandall E, Sheppard JD. Azelastine hydrochloride, a dual-acting anti-inflammatory ophthalmic solution, for treatment of allergic conjunctivitis. Clin Ophthalmol. 2010 Sep 7;4:993-1001. doi: 10.2147/opth.s13479. PMID: 20856595; PMCID: PMC2938280.