Contact lens use changes bacterial load

Researchers in the US have suggested that they have found the root cause of increased frequency of certain eye infections among contact lens wearers.

In a study presented at the American Society for Microbiology meeting last month, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center said they had identified a diverse set of microorganisms in the eyes of daily contact lens wearers that more closely resembled the group of microorganisms of their eyelid skin than the bacterial grouping typically found in the eyes of non-wearers. The conjunctiva was found to have higher bacterial diversity than the skin directly beneath the eye and three times the usual proportion of Methylobacterium, Lactobacillus, Acinetobacter, and Pseudomonas bacteria in the eyes of the study’s nine contact lens wearers than was typically found on the surface of the eyes of the 11 non-contact lens wearers in the study.