In February, the CDC issued a warning against a brand of eyedrops linked to dozens of severe eye infections in the U.S. But the bottles were causing infections months before that.
Pseudomonas aeruginosa has infected 68 people in the U.S. The cases, linked to contaminated bottles of EzriCare artificial tears, have led to three deaths, eight cases of blindness and four eyeball removal surgeries. Now, physicians and researchers have published details from the case of a 72-year-old patient who contracted an infection in November, and how they ultimately identified the eye drops as the culprit.
Three notes from the case study, published in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy:
- In November, the patient went to an outpatient clinic with blurry vision. She was then sent to a hospital ED, where ophthalmologists cultured the infection and prescribed strong antibiotic eye drops.
"I've never recovered [P. aeruginosa] from an eye," said Morgan Morelli, MD, first author on the study and infectious disease fellow at Cleveland-based University Hospitals, in a May 11 news release from the American Society of Microbiology. "It required a lot of thinking and digging to figure out what was going on … and we never thought it was related to a global manufacturing issue."
- When the patient's condition continued to worsen after receiving antibiotics, her case was referred to microbiologists and infectious disease experts at the hospital. After ruling out other potential sources like contacts or a body of water, physicians requested the patient's husband bring in her eye drops for testing. When the bacteria was detected in the eye drops, researchers connected the dots.
- Treatment was especially difficult because the strain of the bacteria was drug-resistant to any antibiotic options that could be administered to the eye. After receiving a strong antibiotic and two other topicals, her condition improved slightly, but it's unlikely she will fully regain vision.