Contact Lens issues

Scientists detail all the yucky stuff in your eyes because of your contact lenses

Ever wondered what has been happening to your eyes because of the contact lenses you've been wearing for years?

It turns out that putting those thin polymers on your eyeballs does more than make you see better. It radically alters the type of microorganisms that live there, a finding that may have important implications for the approximately 71 million contact lens wearers in the world.

Using swabs of various parts of the eye and genetic sequencing, researchers from New York University's Langone Medical Center compared the quantity and types of bacteria on the surface of eyes of contact lens wearers and those who do not wear them. They found notably higher bacterial diversity in the former group.

Scientists believe this may help explain the long-standing problem of why contact lens wearers are more prone to eye infection. The Centers for Disease Control has estimated that Americans make almost 1 million doctor's appointments or ER visits for eye infections.

"Our research clearly shows that putting a foreign object, such as a contact lens, on the eye is not a neutral act," senior study investigator Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, said in announcing the research in a presentation at the American Society for Microbiology annual meeting on Sunday.

The researchers said that the microbiome of contact lens wearers more closely resembled that of the skin than of non-wearers' eyes. Contact lens wearers had 5,245 distinct bacterial strains and subtypes. They had three times the usual proportion of four of them:

• methylobacterium (often found in soil, sewage, and leaf surfaces),
• lactobacillus (typically considered "friendly" bacteria that live in the digestive and urinary tract and does not cause disease),
• acinetobacter (found in soil and water and responsible for the great majority of infections),
• and pseudomonas (widely found in the environment and that can lead to everything from ear infections to more serious issues).

Surprisingly, contact lens wearers had less staphylococcus on their eyes. Many strains of that bacteria harmlessly co-exist on our skin but some superstrains have been linked to a growing number of serious antibiotic resistant infections in recent years. The researchers said they didn't have an explanation for the lower amount of staph bacteria.

Americans don’t wear contact lenses properly and it leads to about 1 million eye infections a year

(Suzanne Plunkett/Bloomberg News )

I'll be the first to admit it: I wear my contact lenses to bed most nights. I sometimes wear them longer than I'm supposed to. And on a few rare occasions, I've found myself nowhere near contact lens solution and used a little bit of water instead. (Shameful, I know!)

Bad contact glass wearer? That's me! If you are one of the estimated 38 million Americans who also wear contacts, it's probably you, too.

According to new numbers released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday, Americans make nearly 1 million doctors appointments and emergency room visits a year for eye infections -- most of them due to the improper use and care of contact lenses.

If you are a contact wearer, you know how easy it is to take short cuts.

Most people have found themselves in a tricky situation, where they have to deal with an errant lens with no contact solution in sight.

(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

Not to mention that once you get away with sleeping in your contacts once, you'll probably do it again. (Some lenses are approved for continuous, overnight wear, but even those should be removed whenever possible for cleaning and to let the eyes rest.)

But just because you can doesn't mean you should.

"People who wear contact lenses over night are more than 20 times more likely to get Keratitis," said Jennifer Cope a medical epidemiologist at the CDC. "Wearing contacts and not taking care of them properly is the single biggest risk factor for Keratitis."

Things happen, but the message from the CDC is that you should try to make them happen less often.

Keratitis is an eye infection of the cornea that is not at all pleasant. It occurs when germs invade the cornea, a clear dome that covers the colored part of the eye. It causes infection, pain, inflammation, scarring of the cornea and yes, it can lead to blindness.

Doctors can easily treat the infection, depending on how early it is diagnosed and what type of bacteria is causing it. But there can and are more serious health consequences.

Even some seemingly harmless behaviors can lead to infection -- like, for example, not replacing the contact case often enough. (The CDC recommends doing this every three months.)

And treating infection can be expensive: The CDC estimates that the cost of a doctor's visit for Keratitis is about $151 on average; each emergency room visit costs an average of $587. Overall in the United States, Keratitis is responsible for $175 million in direct costs.

Here are some other ways you can make your bad contact lens habits a little better, according to the CDC:

• Wash hands with soap and water and dry well before touching contact lenses
• Take contacts out before bed, showering or swimming
• Rub and rinse contacts in disinfecting solution each time you remove them
• Rub and rinse the case with contact lens solution, dry with a clean tissue and store upside down with the caps off after each use
• Replace contact lens cases at least once every three months
• Do not “top off” solution in lens case
• Carry a backup pair of glasses in case contact lenses have to be taken out

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/11/13/americans-dont-wear-contact-lenses-properly-and-it-leads-to-about-1-million-eye-infections-a-year/