New York : Wearing contact lenses daily may alter the eye microbiome, according to a new study which may explain why contact lens wearers are at increased risk of certain eye infections, reports PTI.
Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City have identified a diverse set of microorganisms in the eyes of daily contact lens wearers that more closely resembles the group of microorganisms of their eyelid skin than the bacterial grouping typically found in the eyes of non-wearers.
The team found that the eye surface, or conjunctiva, had surprisingly higher bacterial diversity than the skin directly beneath the eye in the study’s nine contact lens wearers.
They also found three times the usual proportion of Methylobacterium, Lactobacillus, Acinetobacter, and Pseudomonas bacteria in the eyes of the contact lens wearers than is typically found on the surface of the eyeballs of 11 other men and women in the study who did not wear contact lenses.
When measured and plotted on a graph, statistical germ diversity scores showed that the eye microbiome of contact lens wearers had a composition more similar to that of the wearer’s skin than the eye microbiome of non-lens wearers.
“Our research clearly shows that putting a foreign object, such as a contact lens, on the eye is not a neutral act,” said senior study investigator and NYU Langone microbiologist Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello.
