July 5, 2010 
If they want to prevent the development of eye infection, lens users should be sure to maintain their lenses clean with sterile cleaning solution at least once a day. Ten people a year loses an eye due to acanthamoeba… Do you sleep with your shoes on? How about with lenses that you may not even clean or rinse with water? If you don’t make sure to maintain your lenses or use a sterile solution to clean them, typical symptoms of eye inflammation can occur – redness and foreign body sensation in the eye, says BBC News. But even these seemingly harmless infections can lead to losing an eye in only a month.
Because of that, in the eye of those who carry and don’t maintain correctly their lenses, a tiny animal acanthamoeba dwells, and after the dissolution of the cornea dozen Croats per year lose their vision.
“Lens slight damages the lining of the eye and if not regularly cleaned, many causes, among them this one-celled organism can penetrate the eye. It usually reaches the lens with the help of the water, but people who regularly don’t remove the lens are in danger. Swimming with lenses in open water s is dangerous, as well as showering with them, „said dr Mario Sviben, Head of Parasitology at the Croatian Institute for Public Health. acanthamoeba lives in the dust and ‘loves’ the water, even the one from the tap.
People who wear lenses after some time relax and recklessly replace special and sterile cleaning solution with ordinary tap water.
“This little organism is easily ‘hooked’ in the lining of the eye, because its body has a little tang. Once the ‘thrust’ is in the lining of the eye it causes an acute inflammation of the cornea, and gradually ‘dissolves’ until the end when the patient’s eye is literally drained. The doctor immediately takes a sample from the eye and prescribes broad spectrum antibiotics, but the problem is that this organism cannot be detected in the regular smear, “said Dr. Sviben. While most of the eye inflammation patients visit their doctor, about 99 percent of them lose the eye.
To prove acanthamoeba it is necessary to take a sample by scraping the cornea of the eye. Therapy that doctors today have at their disposal to combat this organism is very demanding, long-term and outcome is uncertain.
Taken from: www.net.hr