Monday, August 22, 2016

Case of the Week 410

This week's case is in honor of the third annual Contact Lens Health Week (August 22-26). Contact lenses were received from a young adult male with bilateral conjunctivitis, photophobia and eye pain. These symptoms began shortly after he had been swimming in a freshwater lake while wearing his contact lenses. The contact lenses were plated for bacterial, mycobacterial, fungal and free-living amebic cultures, and fluid from the contact cases was sent to the cytology lab where it was made into a cell block. Here are photographs from the H&E-stained cell block specimen.




Identification?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Elegant Acanthamoeba and amazing there was enough material/gunk to make a cell block. Typical story of a teenager not boiling their contafact lens case.

Anonymous said...

Given the source being an eye, this would likely lead to Acanthamoeba sp. In the second picture, though it is faint, we can see the acanthapods, this may be something to consider when differentiating this amoeba from Naegleria fowleri.
Many years ago, Dr. Visvesvara gave us a very good lecture about these free living amoebas. I wonder if it's still is available through CDC Train.

Florida Fan

Anonymous said...

Hello,

Combining the involvement of the eye and contact lenses along with a visit to a lake leads me to decide on Acanthamoeba as well.

Florida Fan, I am happy say that the lecture is still up and running in CDC Train, as I watched it a few weeks ago. There are a couple of new lectures as well, including a great webinar on malaria diagnostics given by Henry Bishop of the CDC.

I would like to end in saying that this is such a wonderful website. Although I am new to the field of parasitology as a recent college graduate, I have had a lifetime fascination after experiencing a parasitic infection as a child in the Philippines. I'm excited to see the different cases coming in each week!

Sincerely,
Aspiring Parasitologist

Anonymous said...

I wonder if this lectures you are talking about would be available for people abroad, I am from South America and would love to watch them. In my country we have a very short amount of study material for parasites (its kinda like an irony).

-HLCM fan

Anonymous said...

HCLM fan,
Sure, they are accessible on line at CDC Train.
You can also visit www.cdc/DPDx for more materials.
Best wishes,
Florida Fan