Taiwanese student Lian Kao recently lost her vision due to eyeball-eating amoebas It is caused by a free-living protozoa that feeds on bacteria, reports Jezebel. The hungry single-celled organisms formed after the woman knowingly left her contacts in for six months straight without changing or cleaning the lenses.
This lack of attention to eye hygiene created a perfect breeding ground for an acanthamoeba infection to form in Kao's contacts and her corneas. After the amoebas formed, they began burrowing into the student's eyeballs, causing her to eventually go blind.
"A shortage of oxygen can destroy the surface of the epithelial tissue, creating tiny wounds into which the bacteria can easily infect, spreading to the rest of the eye and providing a perfect breeding ground," the director of ophthalmology at Taipei's Wan Fang Hospital, Wu Jian-liang, explained.
"The girl should have thrown the contact lenses away after a month but instead she overused them and has now permanently damaged her corneas."
Kao allegedly left the one pair of contacts in even while she was swimming and sleeping. Lesson learned: If you want to keep your sight, keep those lenses fresh and clean, kids.
Culled from People Mag
