Abstract
Purpose :
Acanthamoeba can cause visually destructive acanthamoeba keratitis (AK) in contact lens (CL) users. The purpose of this study was to determine whether poor CL and CL case care leads to contamination.
Methods :
A questionnaire was presented to CL users and CL cases were collected from 305 healthy CL wearers, and were analyzed for contamination using culturing and real-time PCR quantification of acanthamoeba DNA and 16S r-DNA of bacteria. CL cases containing more than 105 copies/ml of 16S r-DNA were analyzed for sequencing analysis.
Results :
Significant associations between thoroughness of the CL case care and the number of bacterial species and copy numbers of 16S r-DNA were observed. Acanthamoeba DNA was detected in 19.1% of CL cases, however, their presence was not directly associated with poor CL case care. Instead, the presence of Acanthamoeba was associated with significant levels of many different bacterial species. When the CL cases underwent metagenomic analysis, the most abundant bacterial orders were Enterobacteriales, followed by Burkholderiales, Pseudomonadales, and Flavobacteriales. The presence of acanthamoeba was characterized by Propionibacterium acnes and also associated with an increase in the α diversity.
Conclusions :
Acanthamoeba contamination occurs when bacterial flora is diversified in CL cases. This can effectively be prevented by careful and thorough CL case care.
This is a 2020 ARVO Annual Meeting abstract.