ACUVUE Abiliti 1-Day: what the evidence actually shows, and what is still manufacturer data

ACUVUE Abiliti 1-Day, Johnson & Johnson Vision's daily disposable silicone hydrogel lens for childhood myopia, launched in Australia and New Zealand in 2025 and is now being fitted by the optometrist team at Rose Optometry. It arrives with confident marketing: "twice as effective as a dual-focus lens", "55% of children with no clinically meaningful progression over three years". This article does what we do for every myopia-control product: sorts the peer-reviewed evidence from the manufacturer's data on file, and says plainly which is which. It is written for parents and for colleagues, in plain language where we can manage it: a 2026 study of 120 myopia-management web pages, including product pages for Abiliti, found that none met the recommended sixth-grade reading level on every index (Jong et al. 2026). It is patient education rather than promotion; Abiliti is supplied only in person by a fitting optometrist and is not sold online.

The optical idea

Most daily myopia-control soft lenses, including MiSight 1 day, use coaxial dual-focus optics: concentric rings that share the eye's line of sight and add about +2.00 D of defocus. Abiliti 1-Day uses what its designers call a non-coaxial "ring-focus" design and what the marketing calls RingBoost: a small central distance zone of roughly +10.00 D of added power in the centre, with annular treatment zones whose optics are deliberately tilted so that they focus light in front of the retina but off the visual axis. The intent is to deliver a stronger myopic-defocus signal without the ghosting that a strong coaxial add would cause. An independent optical-bench study describes both designs and confirms that Abiliti mixes coaxial and non-coaxial optics while MiSight is purely coaxial (Richards et al. 2025).

What is peer-reviewed

1. The six-month randomised trial (Cheng, Xu and Brennan, 2022)

The pivotal published study is a multicentre, double-masked randomised controlled trial of 199 myopic children aged 7 to 12 (−0.75 to −4.50 D) at nine sites in three countries, published in Ophthalmology Science. Children were randomised to one of two prototype ring-focus lenses ("enhanced efficacy", EE, and "enhanced vision", EV), a dual-focus comparator (DF) or a single-vision lens (SV). The primary outcomes were cycloplegic axial length and spherical equivalent refraction at 26 weeks.

• Unadjusted axial elongation over 26 weeks: EE 0.079 mm, EV 0.119 mm, DF 0.135 mm, SV 0.189 mm.
• Least-squares mean difference versus single vision: EE −0.105 mm (95% CI −0.149 to −0.062), EV −0.063 mm (−0.106 to −0.020), DF −0.056 mm (−0.100 to −0.013).
• EE also had less elongation than the dual-focus lens: −0.049 mm (−0.093 to −0.004), and less refractive progression than SV (−0.12 D vs −0.35 D; difference 0.22 D, 95% CI 0.09 to 0.35).
• All three myopia-control lenses gave mean visual acuity close to 0.00 logMAR. EE and DF produced more reports of haloes than EV and SV. There were no serious ocular adverse events.

The EE prototype is the design that became Abiliti 1-Day. The result is real and statistically robust, but three caveats matter. Six months is a short window in a treatment that runs for years, and myopia-control effects are often front-loaded. The comparator that Abiliti "beat" was a dual-focus lens in the trial, not necessarily the commercial MiSight lens under commercial conditions. And all three authors are Johnson & Johnson Vision employees; this is a well-run sponsor trial, not an independent one. We discussed why that matters in our review of conflict-of-interest statements in myopia trials.

A 95% confidence interval is the range of true effects reasonably compatible with the data; here even the least favourable end of the EE interval (0.062 mm over six months) would be a worthwhile effect if it persisted.

2. The independent vision-quality study (Richards et al., 2025)

A team from Indiana University and the University of Waterloo measured wavefront aberrations and modelled retinal image quality for both lenses, then ran a randomised, double-masked, contralateral trial in 26 myopic children after one hour of wear. Distance acuity was −0.02 logMAR with MiSight and 0.09 logMAR with Abiliti (p < 0.01), a difference of roughly half a line; both are well within normal. Seventy-seven percent of children preferred one lens: 54% MiSight, 23% Abiliti. Image quality was slightly better with the purely coaxial design, particularly with small pupils. The study measured vision, not myopia control, and one hour of wear says nothing about adaptation over weeks. It is, however, the only independent head-to-head data we have, and it cuts against the manufacturer's comfort-preference figures below.

What is not yet peer-reviewed

The claims that carry the marketing are, at the time of writing, manufacturer data on file. We searched PubMed for the 24-month and three-year Abiliti 1-Day outcomes and could not find them in a journal.

• 24 months. A prospective single-arm study of Abiliti 1-Day wearers compared against an external real-world cohort of single-vision spectacle wearers matched on age, refraction and axial length from electronic records. Reported progression: −0.56 D (SD 0.57) and 0.23 mm (0.26) on Abiliti versus −1.16 D (0.87) and 0.50 mm (0.23) in spectacle controls, described as about 54% less axial elongation. The investigator interviewed about it is candid that "because this was not a randomized comparison, we cannot completely rule out remaining differences between groups." Matched external controls are a reasonable design when a placebo arm is unethical, but they cannot control for the fact that families who enrol a child in a contact lens study differ from those who do not.
• Three years. Mean axial elongation 0.31 mm less than with single-vision contact lenses; 55.2% of Abiliti eyes with no clinically meaningful progression versus 13.2% of single-vision wearers; over 95% achieving 6/6 or better. Sample size, design, dropout and the definition of "clinically meaningful" have not been published where we can check them.
• Comfort crossover. A randomised crossover in 75 children aged 7 to 17 comparing Abiliti with MiSight: 90.8% versus 69.7% "never or rarely" felt the lens, 89.2% versus 53.0% found insertion easy, 95.4% versus 66.7% reported the lens never or rarely moved. Again manufacturer data on file. Note the tension with the independent Richards study, where more children preferred MiSight after an hour of wear; the two studies asked different questions over different time frames, and both may be right.

How it sits against MiSight

MiSight 1 day remains the daily soft lens with the strongest published record: a three-year randomised trial (Chamberlain et al. 2019) showing 52% less axial elongation and 59% less refractive progression than single-vision daily lenses, with later extension data. Abiliti has a stronger short-term signal against a dual-focus comparator and a more oxygen-permeable material, but a shorter and largely unpublished record. When comparing the two it is important to compare like with like: the Abiliti six-month figure is an axial-length difference in millimetres, the MiSight headline 59% is a refractive percentage over three years, and neither converts cleanly into the other. Our working position is that both are reasonable first-line daily soft lenses; that a child who is comfortable and compliant in one should not be switched for marketing reasons; and that six-monthly axial length, not the product brochure, decides whether treatment continues, is combined with low-dose atropine, or is changed.

Regulatory and supply notes

Abiliti 1-Day is available in Australia and New Zealand, Canada, and a number of Asian and European markets, and is not approved in the United States or mainland China at the time of writing. Under the manufacturer's Australia and New Zealand supply terms, Abiliti and the ACUVUE OASYS MAX family may be supplied only in person following a consultation and fitting by an eye care professional, and may not be promoted for sale or re-supplied through any online channel. Practices, including ours, may host information for patient education, which is what this article and the Abiliti 1-Day patient page at Rose Optometry are.

Limitations of this evidence

• Only one randomised trial of the design is published, it ran for six months, and it was authored entirely by the sponsor.
• The longer-term efficacy figures are manufacturer data on file. The 24-month comparison used external matched controls rather than randomisation.
• The only independent head-to-head study measured vision after one hour, not myopia control.
• No rebound (post-cessation) data exist for Abiliti; see our review of rebound across 117 myopia trials for why that matters.
• Trial populations were 7 to 12 years old with −0.75 to −4.50 D and low astigmatism; results may not transfer to older, more myopic or astigmatic children.
• Percentage-reduction figures depend on how fast the control group progressed and on trial length, and should not be compared across products.

What we do in Hamilton

At Rose Optometry the optometrist team fits Abiliti 1-Day and MiSight 1 day only after a full myopia assessment: cycloplegic refraction where indicated, corneal topography, macular OCT and IOL Master axial length, with choroidal thickness assessed as an early marker of response. Reviews repeat axial length every six months. The New Zealand Eye Research Centre is set up to run investigator-initiated and sponsored myopia trials locally; independent replication of the Abiliti long-term data is exactly the kind of question a Hamilton clinical trial site exists to answer. Families who want to talk through the options can book a free Myopia Chat with one of the optometrists.

Jagrut Lallu — BOptom (Hons), MSc Specialty Lenses (Hons), FIAOMC. Therapeutic Optometrist & Contact Lens Specialist. Founder, New Zealand Eye Research Centre; Partner, Rose Optometry; WCO Asia-Pacific Myopia Ambassador; International Myopia Institute NZ Ambassador; Clinical Senior Lecturer, Deakin School of Optometry; Honorary Teaching Fellow, University of Auckland.

References

• Cheng X, Xu J, Brennan NA. Randomized Trial of Soft Contact Lenses with Novel Ring Focus for Controlling Myopia Progression. Ophthalmol Sci. 2022;3(1):100232. PMID 36545264. doi:10.1016/j.xops.2022.100232
• Richards J, Jaskulski M, Woods J, Guthrie S, Kollbaum P. Optical characterisation and vision quality assessment of two myopia control contact lenses. Ophthalmic Physiol Opt. 2025;45(5):1142-1150. PMID 40326710. doi:10.1111/opo.13521
• Chamberlain P, Peixoto-de-Matos SC, Logan NS, Ngo C, Jones D, Young G. A 3-year Randomized Clinical Trial of MiSight Lenses for Myopia Control. Optom Vis Sci. 2019;96(8):556-567. PMID 31343513. doi:10.1097/OPX.0000000000001410
• Nixon A. Q&A: Evaluating 24-month outcomes with Abiliti 1-Day in pediatric myopia control. Ophthalmology Times, 2026. Prospective single-arm study with matched real-world spectacle controls; not located in PubMed at the time of writing.
• Johnson & Johnson Vision. ACUVUE Abiliti 1-Day three-year clinical data and Abiliti 1-Day vs MiSight 1 day comfort crossover study (n=75, ages 7–17). Manufacturer data on file, reported in trade press (mivision, March 2026; NZ Optics, 2026). Not located in PubMed at the time of writing.
• Jong M, Waugh M, Ozmizrak P, Flitcroft I. Readability of Online Patient Education Materials for Myopia Management. Ophthalmic Physiol Opt. 2026;46(2):337-346. PMID 41838373. doi:10.1007/s44402-026-00030-6