No, no, no. Why bother killing the tick after a tick bite has delivered Lyme's Borrelia burgdorferi spirochete? Even if it's effective at killing ticks, it wo

No, no, no. Why bother killing the tick after a tick bite has delivered Lyme's Borrelia burgdorferi spirochete? Even if it's effective at killing ticks, it won't stop Lyme transmission. And for it to be effective at killing ticks, the human has to be completely steeped in this GABA channel blocker paralytic. The eye drops offer no real safety guarantees because the dosages are no where near comparable. The human study of surface skin had no data on bites and a short observation period of 6 weeks (roughly the 11-day half-life x 5 half-lives to wash out the dose?). ---- The reported cost for ophthalmic 10ml solution of 0.25% lotilaner/Xdemvy for mites is ~$2k. Reported adverse effects in dogs of lotilaner from 2013-2018 were only ~250, compared to 4k-18K for other drugs (no data on prevalence/usage). It works as a GABA channel inhibitor (neurologic paralytic), specific to mites and perhaps ticks. No effect found in mammalian cells at ~11K/daily dosage for the ophthalmic drops. Human blepharitis study had ~400 people in treatment arm over 6 weeks, ~50% effective. Half-life of 11 days. No reported reversal agent. So if it is toxic, you're out of luck. The optical solution is a tiny amount in the eyes, so little systemic exposure risk. The tick pill involves much more systemic exposure via blood, so the eye drop experience says almost nothing about risk to humans. I imagine the exposure to the tick from a blood bite is 10-1000x what it is from walking on the skin, so it's not clear to me this would stop lyme's Borrelia burgdorferi from being transmitted with the initial bite. So: no.