Sunday, October 16, 2016

Can Contact Lenses Be Bad For Your Eyes?


By: Amanda Ziminski

The magical, transparent domes that bring millions of people's world into focus may be damaging the bacterial composition of your eye, according to a 2015 study.
"The eye has a normal community of bacteria expected to confer resistance to invaders," says senior investigator Maria Gloria Dominguez. She has discovered a correlation between contact lenses and the delicate balance of bacteria.

The study compared the colonies of bacteria living on the eyes of people who wore contacts and people who did not. They recruited 20 people from each group and swabbed their eyeballs. The study found a major difference between the two groups that participated in the study. The bacteria of those who wore contacts resembled more of the colonies on the skin, rather than the normal make up of the eyeball.

Could this mean that contact lenses are harmful to the eye itself? Most likely, however more studies would have to be conducted to formally draw this conclusion. Aside from the fact that contact lenses are potential terrorists to the micro biome  of your eye, many other negative side effects of contacts have been noted. Incidents that happen commonly are corneal abrasions (scratches on the eye's surface) and increased risk for eye infections. Almost 6 percent of contact wearers per year will develop a problem associated with usage.

Works Cited:

Oaklander, Mandy. "New Intel Into How Clean YOur Contact Lenses Are." TIME 100 New Health     Discoveries 2015: 49. Print. 

Image Credit: http://newwesteyeclinic.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/contact_lens_green.jpg

1 comment:

  1. I found this interesting because I didn't know contact lenses could potentially be dangerous. Next time, have the link to the website available so we can see where you get your information from.

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